Cohesion and Reference in English Chatroom Discourse

This paper examines the textual structure of English chatroom discourse focusing on the cohesive elements which are utilised by the participants in order to create a semantically coherent structure. Due to multiple conversations simultaneously occurring and the linearity imposed by the chat software, conversations become intertwined with each other, and adjacent turns often appear to be semantically unrelated. Schönfeldt and Golato demonstrate that participants in a German chatgroup cope with the lack of adjacency by evoking the name of the recipient whom they are addressing. Unfortunately, every chatroom does not adopt such conventions. Based on a preliminary analysis of a Yahoo! chatgroup, this study will show that cohesive devices (e.g., referential forms) are aiding the participants. Cohesive devices such as lexical relationships and direct address are very frequent in chatroom discourse. Furthermore, certain cohesive elements that are common in spoken discourse (e.g., ellipsis) are used less often in chatrooms because they have a greater potential of leading to ambiguity and misinterpretations.