Please take a moment to complete this survey below
Library's collection Library's IT development CancelConversation is a routine activity which occurs in formal and informal situation, such as chatting. In chatting, the participants tend to talk about one topic and then shift and develop it into many new topics or sub-topics and sometimes use
markers to mark the shift. The writer interested in analyzing topic shift and topic shift markers because she wanted to know what types of topic shift and topic shift markers that mostly occurred and also the characteristics of male and female students of PCU in applying them. This research might help people in understanding the differences of males and females in applying topical strategies and topic shift markers in chatting in order to prevent misunderstanding or message misinterpretation. The writer employed qualitative approach in this study. The data were obtained through recording the subjects while they were chatting for half an hour for each sex-group. In analyzing the data, the writer firstly transcribed the collected data into written form. Secondly, she identified the topic shift and topic shift markers used by each sex-group. Then, she applied Stenstrom?s theory about topical strategies (1994) and Schiffrin?s theory about discourse markers (1991) in the analysis. After a thorough analysis, the writer found that there were many similarities and differences between male and female students in terms of the topical strategies and topic shift markers that were mostly used by them, the number of occurrences, and also the use of topical strategies and topic shift markers. From the differences, it could be noticed that male students tended to jump form one topic to another and change the topic abruptly, while female students inclined to make link with the previous speaker?s contribution and then talked on a topic which was still related with the previous or current topic. In other word, female students tended to develop the topic progressively and shift the topic gradually. Moreover, male students inclined to
interrupt the other participants and overturn previous speaker?s contributions and to make their own point as forcibly as possible or changed and introduced a topic suddenly while female students inclined to add other?s contribution and developed one topic into many sub-topics rather than demolish it.