A study on language used by Chatters in Computer Mediated Communication: An Informal communication in Internet relay chat

ABSTRACT

The chatters are the people who make communication by .using Internet facility. It can be held by Internet Relay Chat, ICQ, etc. To communicate using this facility is easy and simple. We only do need a personal computer that uses Internet facility. Using this facility, the chatters ;،meet” other chatters over the world. They communicate sometimes, without knowing each other. They only try to know each other by reading the written messages. To communicate by using computer mediated, needs instant feed- back. So the chatters have to write in short and simple way that is understood by other chatters. Concerning to this situation, the language phenomena also spread in this infonnal communication. They have their own culture and also language. They use some terms, some of them are only used in this communication. The Indonesian chatters also have the same phenomena.

In this kind of infonnal communication, the community of the chatters often use some terms that sometimes are not common to be used in face to face communication. Besides, they also use to make abbreviation, etc.

In this study, the writer used descriptive qualitative research. The structural analysis method is based on the phenomena that usually appear in their conversation. In order this research to be manageable and systematic, the writer chooses observation and interview in way of gathering the data. At last she documented the data.

Through the analysis, this research finds out a lot of things. The term that usually used by the chatters is classified into two forms, they are formed from clipping/borrowing and acronymTborrowing.

Most of the chatters use those terms because of the following reasons: the terms are easy to be remembered. In this way, the chatters use such terms spontaneously, the terms are already familiar and the last because the term can be used to make simple communication.

Finally, may this research be useful for everyone who needs it.