Stylistic Features of Internet Relay Chat IRC as a Medium of Computer-Mediated Communication

Abstract

This study is a quantitative-qualitative, descriptive study in one of the mediums of computer-mediated communication, CMC. It attempts to investigate some stylistic features in the medium of Internet Relay Chat IRC that are used by online chatters. The data of this study are gathered from open access chatrooms through screen shots. The number of screen shots that are used in the analyses is (30) screen shots. The findings reveal that chat systems allow chatters to use different stylistic features such as graphic features, orthographic features, discourse features, flaming, spamming, spoofing, trolling, and lurking. The most frequent features are orthographic features such as “abbreviation, acronyms and punctuation”. These features are widely used in internet relay chat to save time, effort and as economy expressions.