Part of speech tagged asynchronous CMC: Comparing native, non-native, and newspaper English

Howard, Craig Dennis

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/14814 Copy

Description

Title

Part of speech tagged asynchronous CMC: Comparing native, non-native, and newspaper English

Author(s)

Howard, Craig Dennis

Issue Date

2009

Keyword(s)

language teaching, language learning, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, computer-mediated communication

Abstract

Developing learner proficiency in L2 CMC presents unique problems not addressed in traditional course materials. The pedagogical value of learner corpora is well documented; however, corpora of learner CMC are less commonly investigated. Tagging of parts of speech and comparing L2 and native speakers’ samples shed light on the differences between written and computer-mediated language when compared with samples of more traditional texts. In this study, the author used a trained version of a Brill part of speech tagger to tag, study and analyze three corpora’s trigrams. The three corpora were: (1) asynchronous native speaker CMC, (2) non-native speaker CMC, and (3) a set of newspaper articles. The analysis found that the non-native speakers shared the newspapers’ characteristics of repeated trigrams, but dissimilar part of speech trigrams. It also found that the non-native speakers’ CMC shared a number of popular part of speech trigrams with the native speaker CMC corpus, hinting at a structural difference in computer-mediated discourse. The article questions if commonly used pedagogically texts, such as newspaper articles, can address the uniqueness of CMC and are as “authentic” as we generally consider them to be. Implications for teaching and L2 materials development are discussed.

ISSN

0049-2388

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14814

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