Abstract:
This dissertation gives interest to conversational media written interactions taking place in a real time on the internet, mainly Internet (online) Chats. This work introduces English students’ writing samples as a means of studying the multifaceted relationship between the overuse of chat and students’ writings. This study mentions that students’ writing samples offer a reliable framework in that they provide a way to understand, explain, and frame the students’ use and adaptation of written language to suit the conditions of Computer-Mediated Communication. This adaptation of written language has a negative influence on the students written productions. This study aims at bringing out the instances, linguistic specifities of language practices by young
users in cyberspace. This research is inspired by the works of Herring and Danet (2007) in digital writings namely in graphic usages, which deals with the differences between the available face to face semiotic material and that of chat, in addition to the claims put forward by Crystal(2001) that the new medium of communication in CMC is conducted in ways that are neither spoken nor written interaction ‘Netspeak’ as he pointed out. The results obtained from this study
show the negative influence of chat.
