1st Draft of DA paper

Jennifer MacDonald
Research in Language and Literature
English 3029
First draft: Discourse Analysis Paper
November 3rd, 2011
            Over the last decade, the internet has become the biggest known social network. Between friends, family, and even job opportunities, “the web” is the one place everyone can be “linked into” at the same time. The internet has a lot of ups; emailing family all across the world, shopping without having to leave your house, finding the latest fashion and following your favorite celeb, all with a couple clicks of the mouse and a qwerty keyboard. Of course, this world of cyberspace can have its extreme downfalls with many people involved for all the wrong reasons.
                In the “Chat Transcript”, we see firsthand the low’s of the internet. “A” was a victim of the negative aspect of the web as appose to the positive light we tend to relate the internet to. We analyzed this interview, thoroughly, to find one main question that reoccurs repeatedly throughout the conversation. I have come up with a question that I feel I can directly connect and prove through her dialog.
            “A” almost justifies herself a couple times in this interview after expressing her close encounter in the beginning of the transcript. She tells us she was in a chat room, which she knew she should not have been in, and met a man who she did not know. She pursued the conversation and he ended up being an older man lying about his age. For a young girl, this could be a traumatizing and life changing experience. “A” continues throughout the essay to express a lighter topic and she tries to justify herself by using the phrase, “which is dangerous” and telling us a funny story she experienced during another chat room incident. I wonder, does “A” sway the additional conversation and tone because of the confession she expresses to us in the beginning of the transcript by using justification, validation and repeated words to lighten our interpretation of her as a person? This question can be answered by doing a close reading through the transcript by using discourse analysis.
                In the first few lines of the transcript “C” opens conversation about being young and discovering the internet. “A” expresses to us how much she loved being on the internet, AOL, emailing, sending pictures, using Photoshop, etc. At this point, the conversation seems innocent and fun but she uses for the first time in the dialog, “Which can be dangerous”. At this point, we almost dismiss the comment because we’re not sure why it would be dangerous to her yet. After reading into the talk, we see how this incident has shaped her; she kept the situation in the back of her mind and still refers to the internet as a dangerous place because of the devastating experience when she was younger. After the first presentation of the Pedophile Story-, we start to form an opinion of “A” and we can see she almost sees how we can think negatively about her, herself; this is where her justifying comments enter the conversation. She mentions the words “strangers”,” dangerous”, and “scared” all in the same sentence. 
                During her “Reflection on the Pedophile Story”- “A” again, for the third time says “dangerous” and for the second time “scared”. We do have a sense of sympathy for her because of the innocence of “A” in the situation through her youth and unintentional misfortune, but at this same time, my questions rises; is “A” using these words and changing the tone of the conversation so we don’t think less of her, or develop a negative perception of her? Here “C” breaks through the mold but asking if she has told her parents about the situation. “A” confesses she never told her mom or dad then within seconds, changes her statement and says she thinks she told her mom later on in college. This is another place where my question stands strong, is she just telling us she did actually tell her mom so we don’t think she’s a liar, or any less of a person? Through this long statement “A” makes, she expresses how, again, dangerous being in a chat room with strangers is. She also almost pawns the blame on her parents to lighten her load a bit. She tells us she “…had no restrictions, my parents didn’t know how to put restrictions, they weren’t too familiar with it”. Again, in the same statement “A” tells us “…could be really dangerous when there’s chat rooms…” Her justifying comments lead me to believe she is trying to sway our opinion of her as a person, now, over ten years later.
                “C”, after hearing her last statement, tries to close the conversation but “A” comments again, and expresses the tone of the man on the phone and what she “thinks” he said. She adds she wasn’t sure but “thinks” he made a comment which makes her unsure about telling us this phone conversation. The last comment she makes before this first experience is concluded is, she is nervous her mother “is going to kill her”. She again, makes a statement, which might help us to gain respect for her even though she is going against what she knows she shouldn’t be doing.  After this point “C” helps “A” to validate herself by asking “…how did that change the way you used it then?” and “A” expresses to us she was careful and monitored her younger siblings because she didn’t want them to fall victim of the same instances. Again, she is showing us her maturity and responsibility which I personally see as a justification and change in tone so we can interpret a better understanding of her. “A” here is swaying our personal take on her by choosing her words and expressing her further experiences. She also tells us that in middle and high school she was educated on the internet and gained a better understanding on how to use it properly; again a validation.
                When we get to Excerpt 2 in the transcript, I have missed feelings about “A”. I’m not sure if she is sincere and honest or she is trying to swing us to believe she is a good person by saying certain things and expressing particular opinions. “C” asks “A” in the second section what “A” and her friends did typically when they were together on the internet. “A” tells us they would check the internet, homepages, send pictures, and once again tells us, they go into chats but verifies by saying the chats were with their friends and people they knew. Here we ask ourselves, why would she be in a chat room again if she had a bad experience prior to this? Despite our interpretations, she tells us “…which could be dangerous, cause they could be imposters, we really didn’t care”. Again the use of dangerous arises but then she tells us they “really didn’t care”. “Really” to me, is a word to intensify the following word, or in this case, de-intensify; she uses “really did not care” as a way to tell us it wasn’t that big of a deal. “A” then expresses the use of paint and Photoshop. She tells us her and her cousin would change themselves to look more appealing and send the new edited pictures out to people. She concludes this statement by saying “so we had a lot of fun”. I would think she would believe this to be the most dangerous part of the entire transcript but it is the only place she didn’t use the word dangerous! Sending pictures of yourself as a more appealing and almost perfect person by editing and tweaking is to gain attention and they might get it from someone they weren’t necessarily aiming towards. At the same time, my question remains, was “A” telling us different situations and changing the conversation to a lighter note to change our analysis of her?
                In the last and “funny” side of the chat room experience, “C” asks “A” if she has another experience with technology. Here I feel like “A” could go anywhere with this. She could say something completely off chat room talk but she insists on telling us a funny aspect of a chat room, which to me, seems like she is really going to justify her actions in a chat room even though chatting still seems extremely dangerous. “A” goes into detail about being in a chat room, picking a random guy based on his screen name, chatting with him and sending him a picture without knowing who this person was. Why would “A” send a picture of herself to a stranger, especially after her incident with the last chat room guy? The reason “A” decided to tell us this story is because it turned out to be “funny”. She elaborates and we find out the guy who they sent their picture to happened to be the pastor’s son who was 20 years old. He actually became mad with the girls because of the risk of sending pictures of themselves to strangers. You would think “A” from here would be ashamed with herself. What if it wasn’t someone she knew and the same situation like story one happened? What if the man on the other side of the computer was a pedophile from their town and pursued her more than a phone call? Once again “A” repeats herself to get her point across; “He was like our older brother, eww.” “We knew him like an older brother…” “…this time is was someone we knew…” she states this more than three times to let us know she was familiar with the person she was sending the pictures to which is ironic because she didn’t know the person BEFORE she sent the pictures; she found out after. This to me seems like the most dangerous encounter in a chat room she’s told us about and she’s downplaying it to make it seem less “scary” or “dangerous”. Once again, my question relates to this directly; is she downplaying the situation so we form a better perspective of “A” as a person?
            Next she told us she would change her age to make her seem more desirable to older people, she would change her screen name so people would think she was a different person and edited the pictures to look more desirable. This all seems very deceiving and dangerous to say the least. At the end of her statement, she says very casually, “What can you do?” almost like she is brushing off the whole conversation. “A” at this point is trying to make everything seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal by the way she comments and makes fun of certain situations.
            My questions still stands, does “A” sway the additional conversation and tone because of the confession she expresses to us in the beginning of the transcript by using justification, validation and repeated words to lighten our interpretation of her as a person?  I feel my question is validated my aforementioned points. “A” seems to have an “excuse” by her using a repetition of words, neutralizing her actions by telling us a serious, off putting story then counteracting it with another chat room experience, which happened to be “funny”. Her comparison with danger and funny seems to be a justification. She tries to sway our interpretation of the experience by changing the tone and repeatedly stating her feelings.