Concept of Power in Computer-Mediated Communication

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F46747885%3A24310%2F20%3A00008387" target="_blank" >RIV/46747885:24310/20:00008387 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Concept of Power in Computer-Mediated Communication

Original language description

There has been a recent increase of interest amongst linguists and also philosophers in the phenomenon of power. The presented article attempts to consider power and ways in which it is exercised through language of computer-mediated communication (further CMC). This unique environment is determined by specific conditions of an Internet chat room, such as anonymity and no audio-visual cues. The main aim of the article is to find whether there are comparable ways of using the power like in face-to-face communication. In the theoretical part, Brown and Levinson`s notion of power is therefore considered together with degrees of polite mitigation and face-threatening acts. At the same time, Watts` and Diamond`s investigations of power in various open and closed groups in oral communication are taken into account. However, the question remains how tight the group in CMC is. In this respect, it is noteworthy to observe whether members of the chat room have greater status than the others and analyze the means in which this possible status is achieved. The article also makes inquiries into the concepts of topic control related to the exercise of power inside the specific chat room group. The corpus was collected by the author herself. The main hypothesis is that the status of power changes quickly throughout chatting and it highly depends on other cues such as address, non-verbal action displays, punctuation marks and so on. In other words, there are only few means how to exercise the power and hold it in this continuously changing and anonymous environment.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60203 - Linguistics

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2020

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů