Seeking a Web Designer

I am currently seeking a web designer to create a survey website for my research.

Based out of Whitehorse, I am continuing to survey youth on their text messaging habits.  However, I would like to take my research to the next step and survey them online.

The project would begin immediatley but the site would need to be completed by February 28th 2010. The sooner it is complete, the more participants I am likely to get.

The survey site should be simple. Each participant should be able to login, answer the questions, and the data is automatically stored for me to analyze.

I have limited funding for this project, so if I cannot find a designer for a good price, I will have to resort to paper.

Please Contact me if you are interested,

Breanna Blottner

breeblottner@gmail.com

Social media decides the difference between a language and a dialect

On December 15, 2009 Facebook bragged on the Facebook blog that the service is now available in over 70 languages. (71 to be exact)

In 2003, when Facemash (the proto-facebook) was created by Mark Zuckerberg it was only available in the US dialect of English.

The recent expansion to 70 languages was thought to be a great plight. But what was the reasoning behind the 70 languages Facebook chose?

The fact that many online services are only available in English is a kind of cultural imperialism.  Speakers of other languages feel they are at a disadvantage because they are not a speaker of English.

Upon first glance you’d want to commend Facebook for being available to so many different cultures.

I decided to investigate the particular languages that facebook has chosen and try and understand the reasoning they picked those specific languages.

Facebook includes 4 different dialects of English. They are: US, UK, Upside down and pirate. Immediately you can see that two of the languages Facebook boasts about are jokes!

The fact that someone was paid to code my facebook so that all the writing appeared in upside down English drives me crazy. Especially when I know they could have been coding it for Canadian English instead! But Canadian and US dialects of English are mutually comprehensible, so Facebook must have reasoned that Canadians don’t need their  own facebook language.

Looking at other languages I noticed that Facebook has two dialects listed for almost every language. This makes sense for Chinese where many of the dialects are not mutually comprehensible, but for the two variations of French, Portuguese and Slovak?

I spent some time adjusting the language on my facebook between the Canadian and European dialects of French. Facebook does not translate the content of your page, and I could find no differences changing between the two dialects of French. My pages stayed the same whether it was Canadian or European French.

Facebook is also available in dead languages. Such as Latin. What is the point of this? Another joke?

I guess it comes down to the age old linguistic controversy of what qualifies a language?

What is the difference between a dialect and a language?

I always answer that dialects are mutually comprehensible and languages are not.

But it is clear that Facebook has a different definition. Any little difference, even turning the text upside down, seems to qualify it as another language.

1 year recap

What will English sound like in 100 years? 500 years? 1000 years?

 

If a speaker from today travelled into the future, would they understand the dialect being spoken?

It depends.

We are drawn to the negative.

Over the last few weeks I have been analyzing my own and others twitter feeds looking at positive and negative sentence structure.

The results are not what I expected.

My data found that more than 80% of the messages involve some form of negation (not, no).  Furthermore, that these messages were more likely to get responses. In this case approximately 65% of the messages containing a negation would get at least one response or be retweeted.

The remaining 20% of tweets did not contain negation but 32% carried a negative tone. This means the content of the tweet was bad news or a negative outlook.

It seems that people don’t respond or retweet happy news very often.

Why are we so structurally negative?

I think it’s the fact that when we are tweeting we want to relate to our ‘followers’.  The desired outcome of a ‘tweet’ isn’t just to get your message out there, but to know that others are listening and relating.

You put a message out there. Someone responds, or retweets it.  This is less likely to happen if your message is positive. Only 12% of the positively formed tweets got responses or retweets.

I have found similar information on status updates on facebook.  If a person writes ‘ I am not having a good day’ they are likely to get multiple comments from friends giving them sympathy or encouragement.

For example a friend wrote ‘I feel so sick’ and received 13 comments of advice and encouragement. Another friend wrote  ’so excited to be home again’ and did not receive a single comment.

This is similar to Cameron’s research on illness stories (2004). Since everyone has had an experience in their life of being ill, they can relate and contribute to the conversation.

We have all had negative experiences, so we can relate better.

But we’ve all had positive experiences too.  The point is when someone writes about a great thing that happened. You don’t trample on their happiness with your even better news.  If someone writes ‘ I found $20′,  You don’t reply  that you found $50.  You start your own thread.

The reasons for responding to a positive post can usually just be a laugh, or a congratulatory comment.

When a post is negative you can offer support, suggestions, sympathy, or share a similar experience.

The reality is that in the social networking environment, we connect over sharing our negative experiences.

Why do you have a relationship status on Facebook? So that when you break up you can announce it to all your friends.

Perhaps my data is skewed, and I only follow a group of depressed, negative people. But even my attempts to put out positive messages has not yeilded responses on twitter.

Do Grice’s Conversational Maxims apply to texting?

There are unwritten social norms that we follow when it comes to speech.

While no one explicitly teaches them to us, we abide by them as though they are rules.

In his essay, ‘Logic and Conversation’ (1975), Paul Grice depicts four maxims of conversation.

In essence he explains principles that are logical to follow when trying to get a message across. They are: quantity, quality, relation and manner.

The quantity maxim rules that speech contributions should be informative but should not exceed the required amount of information.

This means you say what they need to know, but you don’t have to tell them everything you know about that topic.

For example: If the topic is someone’s sick cat. You can talk about when your cat was sick, but you do not need to tell them every detail about your cat.

The quality maxim is based on truth. Do not lie or make statements you cannot back with evidence.

The relation Maxim is simple. Be relevant. If the topic is a sick cat, don’t start talking about your computer crashing.

The manner maxim encourages speakers to avoid ambiguity, be brief, and be orderly.

The speaker should be clear and get the message across in the shortest possible way.

The speaker should order their contribution in a way that is easiest for their audience to understand.

Are these maxims relevant to how we produce text messages?

The shorter the better (22 characters)

Text messages are the telegrams of our generation. (50)

The shorter the message, the better. (37)

Telegrams were short because the longer the message, the more expensive it was. (79)

Text messages are short due to character limits, cost and speed. (64)

If you go over 140 characters, including spaces, you have to send a second message. (83)

Since text messages cost money to be sent a received, it is important that you try to say as much as you can in just one message. (129)

So what do we sacrifice to get our entire thought across? (57)

How Apple did it right for AAC.

Recently I have been looking into what is new and available in terms of Augmentative and Alternative Communication.  AAC is how we get a message to someone else without using speech. This is what makes effective communication possible for people with severe speech and language problems.

It is important while selecting a device that you realize that each person has different needs for communication. Trying to find a discrete but effective device can be very difficult.

I was looking at a small pocket communicator: the Palmtop portable IMPACT (shown below).  It looks like a smartphone or a pocket PC, and has a touch screen and an external speaker included. You can tap on the picture and the keyword is said aloud.

Gus! (shown below) is a Pocket communicator made by Dell.  Gus! comes with or without a pocket PC capability and has the options of selecting pictures or text input that Gus! will read. Gus! comes with external speakers and runs on 2 AA batteries.

This had me wondering if our smartphones were equipped with any kind of AAC.  In March 2009, Apple released the app Proloquo2 for iphone and ipod touch.  This application (shown below) turns the iphone into a complete AAC device. It displays pictures that when tapped can be read aloud or you can type into the keyboard and the device will read aloud. This is an adaptive device which new vocabulary and pictures can be added and the ‘home’ menu can be changed. You pay almost $200 American for just the app. The external speakers are also sold separately. However, when it comes to AAC, $200 is pretty cheap.  Medicare won’t cover multipurpose devices when it comes to AAC so its $200 out of your own pocket.

There is Currently no AAC applications available for the Blackberry comparable to the Proloquo2 for Iphone and Ipod touch. Blackberry has an application that will read the encyclopedia aloud to you and another application that will read your emails to you.

Another great thing about Apple is while working on speech recognition technology they actually started to output text-speech technology.  In fact, every MacOS X version has had text-speech technology incorporated. With the new Leopard 10.5 a new natural sounding voice named ‘Alex’ and the opportunity to sing, whisper and yell have been added. Most AAC technology does not have a whisper or yell option, only volume options.  Singing in AAC is a brand new concept.

Software can be installed on your PC but too often it is second rate to the actual AAC devices currently on the market.

It seems if you want to  get a multipurpose device for AAC you should get a Mac.