Online discourse in a teen chatroom: New codes and new modes of coherence in a visual medium

In this article, we describe how participants in an online teen chatroom adapt to the unique features of chat environments to achieve conversational coherence and create a new communicative register. Typically, online chat conversations have several topics being discussed simultaneously, and participants' contributions do not follow the turn-taking sequence found in face-to-face or telephone conversations. We propose that there are two basic requirements for coherence in a chat conversation-establishing who is participating in a particular conversation and establishing what constitutes a relevant response. Our analysis of an online chat transcript reveals that the visual nature of the chat medium allows participants to modify extant communication strategies and create new ones to fulfill these requirements. Formally, the chatroom code integrates features of oral and written discourse. Functionally, this code, in the context of a teen chatroom, enables participants to co-construct important features of discourse, such as participant identity and characteristics, and relevant utterances. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.