Graded Assignment 2 - CMC

CMC Part 1 (Research Summary)

Introduction

This study investigates the differences in language use by female and male Malaysian teenage bloggers who use blogs as a diary to express their daily issues about life.

Herring (1993, p. 8), in her discourse analysis of a Computer Mediated Communication

(CMC) bulletin board described the features of women’s language as "attenuated assertions, apologies, explicit justification, questions, personal orientation and support of others", whereas some features of men's language were "strong assertions, self-promotion, rhetorical questions, authoritative orientation, challenges and humor.”

Research Instruments

            This study uses the data taken from the blog of the four teenagers. They use their blog to express all the things that happen in their daily lives. There are two instruments used to analyze this study; a word counting tool and a checklist. The students chose the blogs from "BlogMalaysia.com" because it is free and  the fastest growing blog directory in Malaysia. This website allows bloggers around Malaysia to promote their blogs. It also provides a list of blog links in Malaysia with many categories. In the participants’ posting,s a word counting tool is used to count the frequency of words. The frequency of occurrences of the characteristics in blog posting is counted using Character and Word Counter with Frequency Statistics Calculator. This tool is very useful to improve the websites as well as writing skills for the students. In this particular study, this tool is used to count the frequency of words that are listed as having the characteristics of the language used by males and females. Other than that, researchers use the checklist to identify the occurrence of each language characteristics in the blog postings.

Methodology

Using a qualitative research design, this study uses a case study which is restricted by time and activities. The main participants of this study were selected from BlogMalaysia.com which is open to any Malaysian blogger who wants to promote their blog. Since the focus of this study was to observe any gender differences in language use by Malaysian teenagers following types of blogs found in BlogMalaysia.com were excluded from this study such as blogs with multiple authors, blogs with pictures only, and blogs with commercial and organizational purposes only. Three criteria were used in selecting participants following that the participants should be university undergraduate students majoring in any field, the posts should be written in English and the blog must have accumulated more than 50 posts since it started. Finally, the participant has been a blogger for more than one year and frequently updates the blog. The participants of the study  consist of two male and two female bloggers.

Results

Five categories of language features emerged from the data analysis: intensifiers, hedges, tag questions, empty adjectives, and adverbs.  This section presents the data showing the differences in language features used by male and female bloggers.

Discussion

Women and men use the language according to the society’s values of how both sexes should communicate.  The findings of this study seem to support Lakoff’s (1975) theory that women use intensifiers more than men. The usage of both features (intensifier and lexical hedges) happens to be higher in female bloggers language use because of their nature as women. In Malaysian society, women are sometimes constructed as subordinate and submissive to men (Bresnahan et al., 2001). Thus their language reflects the attitude and nature which is constructed by society. Furthermore, female bloggers make use of tag questions more than male bloggers and it also helps in pushing readers to communicate on the blogs. Moreover, it has also been noticed that empty adjectives are widely used by female than male bloggers due to the fact that women have the tendency to include feelings and emotions into their expressions. Lastly, there is an insignificant difference found in the use of initial adverbs between male and female bloggers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, language features such as intensifiers, lexical hedges and empty adjectives are very closely related to gender and socialization. However, the use of adverbs as indicated in this study as well as in earlier studies do not seem to be related to gender since the number of usage of adverbs among male and female bloggers were slightly different. The findings of this study indicate that there are some gender differences in language use among Malaysian teenage bloggers.

Reference
Zaini, A., Hazirah, A., Saadiyah, D., & Kemboja, I. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/GEMA%20vol%2012%20(1)%20Special%20section%202012/pp_105_124.pdf




CMC Part 2 (Corpus Analysis)

Introduction

One of the modes of Computer Application Communication (CMC) is blog. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with subsequent entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Most blogs are interactive; allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and these features distinguishes blog from other static websites (Wikipedia). In this study, we have chosen a blog by Harmony (www.healthblogspot.com) who has a Master degree in nutrition and is currently working part time as a nutritionist and also working part time as a fitness instructor.

Purpose of Corpus Analysis

By using some samples of corpus (4 posts) from the blog, we aim to analyze the textual metafunction in the corpus selected to show the important aspects of cohesion in language writing.

Description of corpus

The corpus is taken from one of the CMC which is a Blog. The corpus was taken from www.healthblogspot.com. The corpus was quite small and four posts contained in it are selected to be analyzed.

Framework of Study

The framework of this study focuses on textual metafunction. From the four posts, we analyzed theme, rheme, given, new, and adjunct.

Halliday (1985a) claimed that all language simultaneously realizes three different kinds of meaning (metafunctions): a representation (experiential metafunction), a message (textual metafunction) and an exchange (interpersonal metafunction). The clause is taken as the basic unit of analysis, and the goal of SFL analysis is to identify how each of  the three metafunctions are realised in one single clause. In this study, analysis was restricted to the textual metafunctions. Textual metafunction help to organise the message within and between clauses.

In the textual metafunction, a clause is analysed into Theme and Rheme. According to Halliday (1985a:39) Theme is the component which serves as “the starting-point for the message; it is what the clause is going to be about”. Theme usually has familiar or “given”, information, i.e. information that has been mentioned in the text, or is familiar with the context. Theme can be identified based on order. Theme is the element which comes first in the clause.

Rheme can be defined as the part of the clause that is developed by Theme (Eggins, 1994). Rheme contains unfamiliar or “new” informations. It is easy to identify the Rheme; everything that is not the Theme is the Rheme.

According to Eggins (1994), there are two main types of textual elements which can get to be Theme. They are Continuity Adjuncts and Conjunctive Adjuncts. Conjunctive Adjuncts can be classified as words which are used in spoken dialogue that show the speaker’s response to what a previous speaker has said. For examples, oh, well, Yea and no. Another adjunct is the Conjunctive Adjunct. Conjunctions, which are the elements that link clauses or sentences together, were described as Conjunctive Adjuncts. Conjunctions can occur whether in first position in the clause or in other positions. Examples of conjunctions are and, but, however and therefore. (Eggins, 1994)

Findings of Analysis (table)

	Post 1	Post 2	Post 3	Post 4
Theme	39	16	19	40
Rheme	40	17	19	40
Given	40	18	21	49
New	41	20	22	45
Adjunct       a)      Conjunction       b)      Continuity	16 none	5 none	2 none	13 none

Conclusion

Textual metafunction relates to the cohesion in a text. From the data gathered from the corpus selected, sentences are found to be linked together. The findings of given and new within the corpus proved that the structure organization in the author's blog uses the features of textual metafunction in her posts. As a result, her posts are organized neatly and the cohesiveness in her sentences makes her posts easier to understand.

Appendices

Post 1 - Lose 7 pounds in 7 days.

My friend is still waiting for her “magic diet pills” to come in the mail, for those who want to lose weight without the use of pills or other substances, there is some good news.  I am going to tell you how to lose 7 pounds in 7 days.  Everyone can do this, here is how:

Eat Breakfast - I am sure you have heard this before but this is one of the best ways to jump start your metabolism and get your body ready to start burning fat for the day.  Eating breakfast also helps to balance your sugar levels and helps you go into a carb craving binge later on in the day.

Protein and no carbs.  I am not telling you to give up carbs forever, but if you stay away from them for a week and replace carbs with protein you will lose at least 7 pounds in 7 days and probably much more.  Carbs are bad for a lot of reasons, obviously we know that they turn to sugar and then fat but they also are “empty” in the sense that they will not provide us with the feeling of being full and satisfied.  Protein on the other hand, is more satisfying and fills us up.  Protein also takes more energy for our body to digest so we actually burn more fat by digesting the protein.

Snack, Snack, Snack - You have my permission to snack often, you should eat healthy snacks every 2 hours.  This will boost your metabolism and also help stop you from overeating during your main meals.  The key here is”HEALTHY” snacks.  Don’t kid yourself here, you know what is healthy and what is not.  My favourites are peanut butter and apples, sometimes together.

Pump up your work outs.  You do not need to work out like a crazy person, but you do need to work out.  Three 30 minutes sessions per week should work well.  The trick here is to make these work outs intense.  You should be moving constantly during these workouts to pump up your heart rate.  Here is what I do.  I do the elliptical for 10 minutes to get things going, I then rotate between push ups, crunches and jump roping for the next 20 minutes straight.  It is not as hard as it seems.

If you follow this advice, you will lose 7 pounds in 7 days.
    
Post 2 -Acai Diet

I am happy to report that I am feeling great, it did take me a little while to recover from the colon cleansing situation.  I have been getting back into the flow of exercising regularly and have been getting back into Yoga in a big way.  I am actually thinking about becoming a certified Yoga instructor.  I am starting to seriously look into it but I am not sure if I have the time right now.

Anyway, the point of this post is to let you know that my friend has finally selected the brand of ACAI “pills” to buy.  I was very surprised as I looked into her that there were some many choices out there.  I naively thought that there was one source to get the berry.  There are literally over a hundred different companies that market this product.  I looked at the ingredients on many of them and they all seem to contain the same active ingredients.

Here is a link to the product that she selected:
Acai Berry Select 

She based her decision on some positive reviews and the fact that she was able to get a free trial.

Nothing else to report, she ordered it yesterday.  I will let you know when she starts the program so you can follow along.

Post 3 - Acai Diet - Does it work?

As a nutritionist I have been inundated with questions about ACAI berry, what is it? Does it work?  Is it safe?  I have decided to write about this topic for the next 30 days on my blog.  I will not be partaking in the acai diet, I instead will be using my good friend Julie as the human guinea pig.  I figured it would make sense for me to start off with the basics.

ACAI berry is a berry that is indigenous to the Brazilian rainforest.  It has become all the rage lately thanks to the book by Dr. Perricone and Opera.  As you know if Opera is behind it, it will be a winner (think, Obama!) This berry is being touted as the most nutritious food on Earth.  The berry is supposed to help aid weight loss and it is now the latest diet craze out there right now.   Does it work?  I am not sure, but I will have a better idea in 30 days.

Post 4 - Colon Cleanser Experiment – Final Evaluation

It has been 30 days since I started this crazy experiment and all I can say is Thank God.  It has been a very unpleasant 30 days and I am really glad it is over.  Let me start with the last couple of days and then I will conclude with a final evaluation.  The last couple of days were pretty eventful as more toxic sludge has exited my body.  Some of the movements were very large in length while others were very loose.  It seems like stuff was just coming out in all shapes and sizes.  As a final evaluation, I can say that it does work.  I have excreted stuff from my body that would still be in there had I not taken this product.  What I will also say is that it was one of the most unpleasant months of my life.  I experienced stomach pains and discomfort more days than not.  My bowel movement schedule was all over the place.  Sometimes I would go 8 times a day and then not at all the next day.  Instead of being filled with energy, I was exhausted most of the time.  I drank plenty of water but I always felt dehydrated.  I just drank 32 ounces of water and I am dying of thirst right now.  As far as the weight loss is concerned, I lost just under 4 pounds.  My jeans are definitely looser and my stomach is noticeably flatter. 

I guess I am glad that I took the product, but I do not think that I will take it again, certainly not for a long long time.  My advice would be to use it if you really think you need to.  If you do not, I would stay away because the discomfort and the impact on your life may not be worth it.  I will leave it up to you to decide.

References

Blog. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Eggins, S., 1994, An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, Pinter Publishers:

            London.

Halliday, M.A.K., 1985a, Introduction to Functional Grammar, Edward Arnold: London.

Harmony. (2009, March 8). Lose 7 pounds in 7 days. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/lose-7-pounds-in-7-days/

Harmony. (2009, March 4). Acai Diet. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/acai-diet/

Harmony. (2009, February 26). Acai Diet - Does it Work? Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/acai-diet-does-it-work/

Harmony. (2009, February 26). Colon cleanser experiment - final experiment. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/colon-cleanser-experiement-final-evaluation/