• Prof. Dr. Henning Lobin: Web as Culture
• Prof. Dr. Angelika Storrer: Chatspeak: How web users adapt written language to synchronous communication 
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Faßler: Smart ethnic groups. Or: what and how are we looking for in Networks?
• Prof. Steven Thorne, Ph.D.: Culture, technology, and mediation

Web as Culture

Prof. Dr. Henning Lobin, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen

Thursday, July 16, 2009, 1:00-2:00 p.m.

 

Henning Lobin ist Professor für Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft und Computerlinguistik an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Er ist zudem Geschäftsführender Direktor des Zentrums für Medien und Interaktivität (ZMI) und Sprecher des LOEWE-Schwerpunkts "Kulturtechniken und ihre Medialisierung. 

 

Chatspeak: How web users adapt written language to synchronous communication 

Prof. Dr. Angelika Storrer, Technische Universität Dortmund

Thursday, July 16, 2009, 4:30-5:30 p.m.

 

Abstract: In synchronous forms of web communication – chat groups, instant messaging etc. – users directly interact with each other by text messages. Since most of these messages are keyed in and exchanged in a very short time, they are typically formulated in a speech-like style and deviate from the standards of grammar and orthography established for written language. In the mass media these deviations are often interpreted as a symptom of the decay of  literacy. Most linguists, in contrast, describe and analyze the stylistic peculiarities of online messages as a new register which adapts written language to the demands of interactive online communication. The paper will support the linguists’ view using data from a corpus of German chat logfiles recorded in different chat environments (IRC, moderated and non-moderated webchats) and in various communication settings (E-Learning, business, politics, flirt/socializing). Findings from quantitative and qualitative studies in this corpus will show (1) which factors influence form and structure of the utterances, (2) how register-specific word and sign formation patterns compensate for the lack of direct visual and auditive contact between the chat participants and (3) how web users make use of these patterns for self-presentation and community building. In conclusion we will discuss how the stylistic peculiarities of this new written register should be considered in the context of language teaching and language learning.       

Angelika Storrer is Professor for German Linguistics at Technische Universiät Dortmund. Her current research focuses on linguistic aspects of computer-mediated communication and hypertext; lexical information systems and computational lexicography; corpus linguistics.

 

Smart ethnic groups. Or: what and how are we looking for in Networks?

Prof. Dr. Manfred Faßler, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Friday, July 17, 2009, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

 

Abstract:  ...The Webification of cultures - through consumed dynamics of informational supply chains and temporalized economic, scientific,technological and artistic projects - turns the large institutional cultures into networks of small informational clouds, loosely joined, but kept active by billions of connected activities, questions, re-enactments, feed-back loops, projects, inventions, questions. Imagine pluralised culture content breaks up into not 20 or 100 different interrelated contents but in to 20.000 or 100.000. Would You regard this decoupling as radical disaggregation of culture or as a creative reinvention of the wisdom of group, crowd, network, or of Collectives? Or is it a “New Socialism” without State and traditional culture-references, as Kevin Kelly announced it in the June-Edition of “Wired” just a month ago, - writing: “The online masses have an incredible willingness to share.”

Well, they have, but are they still ´masses´? For sure, we underestimate the power of our tools, instruments, abstractions, of the passive selections of environments and active selective interactions or formative practices, to reshape collaborative and cooperative contents. And we underestimate the programmed bugs of culture, the need to collaborate, - avoiding proliferation of bug-feedbacks. Cultures are transformed from steep institutions to

Beta-Testing and Debugging-Cultures, based on global learning intensities, from cultures of continuity to latent or interim cultures…

 

Manfred Faßler ist Professor am Institut für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte umfassen Medienanthropologie und Medienevolution, Binäre Medien und Text-Bild-Integration, Netztechnologien und verändernde Wissensarchitekturen / Wissensgesellschaft sowie Kulturen und ihr Virtuelles.

 

Culture, technology, and mediation

Prof. Steven Thorne, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

Saturday, July 18, 2009, 11:00-12:00 a.m.

 

Abstract: Concomitant with burgeoning numbers of Internet and new media users comes a parallel growth in the variety of everyday forms of participation in civic, professional, and social life, and perhaps more profoundly, the emergence of cultural formations that have surfaced only in, and through, Internet mediation. These late modern conditions raise questions as to how researchers and language educators should orient themselves to the changing qualities, purposes, and contexts of second language use and learning. This presentation describes a broad research program examining on-line communication, new media literacies, and online gaming as settings for multiple language (L2) use and development. The presentation begins by contextualizing communication technologies within broader demographic, historical, and critical-sociocultural perspectives. A number of examples of online interaction are then explored: (1) participation in plurilingual and intercultural online communities; (2) interaction in organized Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language partnerships, and (3) transcultural communicative activity occurring in multiplayer online games. In each of these settings, multiple languages and cultures can be seen to serve as resources for carrying out a variety of indexical and proleptic functions, social actions, and identity play. Collectively, these new media contexts suggest significant possibilities for agentive language use and language-culture learning. In conclusion, I suggest the need to further examine the relations between school-based literacies and the heterogeneous practices of participation in the non-institutional literacies that form the broader contexts of online life.

Steven Thorne is Assistant Professor in the department of Applied Linguistics and Associate Director of the Center for Language Acquisition at the Pennsylvania State University. He also serves as the Advisor for Mediated Learning at the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (a national foreign language resource center). His research focuses on cultural historical activity theory, computer-assisted language learning, new media literacies, second language acquisition, and themes relating to social theory and critical pedagogy.