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Allison Shapp ’08 (Plainview, N.Y.) is a Marquis Scholar double majoring in music and linguistic studies. She is working on her honors thesis in linguistic studies with Andrea Smith, associate professor of anthropology & sociology. The following is a first-hand account of Shapp’s experiences with her thesis.
One of my friends said to me recently, “Out of all the students at Lafayette, I bet you get the most class credit for instant messaging!” This is probably very true and the primary reason for that is my thesis. The research that I’m doing is about away messages. When I tell people that, the first question is usually “What major let’s you get away with studying away messages?” The answer to that is: one that I created myself.
Toward the end of my sophomore year I faced the decision that most students do at that time: what to declare as my major. I struggled a bit trying to fit into one of the already defined majors, but then I discovered the unique opportunity that Lafayette offers for students to design their own course of study. I decided that this was the best option for me, and I went ahead with the process of creating myself a major in linguistic studies. It is based in the anthropology department, but included classes at Lafayette in psycholinguistics, philosophy of language, English linguistics, and foreign language. I also was able to include linguistics classes that I took while abroad at the University of Paris III.
As the capstone to my independent major, I am doing an ethnographic study of the college community of instant message users. So what does that entail? Ethnography is the exploratory study of all aspects of a social group or community. Most people are primarily familiar with ethnography in the context of something like an anthropologist going to live among an island tribe and learning about their society, but it is becoming more and more common for people to study societies and groups that they themselves are a part of it.
The fact that I am a member of the community that I’m studying and that away messages are such a part of my everyday life is a big reason why the topic interests me so much. The way that people communicate through new electronic technologies is also really interesting to me because it is a very new thing to study, and the phenomena that these technologies create have a very large effect on the way that society communicates and uses language.
Currently I’m collecting data for this research by periodically recording the away messages of 50 student volunteers. These volunteers agreed to give me their screen names and some other information about their instant messaging habits, and let me monitor and record their away messages. I then send my volunteers e-mails with follow-up questions about selected away messages. The questions mostly ask things about who they intended to understand a particular away message, how a quote or lyric they used related to what was going on in their life at that time, and other motivations behind creative away messages.
What I’ve found so far is that even though away messages are a public medium – anyone can read your away message whether they’re on your buddy list or not – people use them in very private ways. People use quotes and song lyrics to convey messages that they might not want everyone to understand, but only those friends that have enough information to understand how the quote relates to situations in the writer’s life. This also provides the writer deniability when someone inquires too personally, “Oh, it was just a song lyric.”
People also frequently put up away messages that are only intended to be understood by a very small subset of the audience that will read it. These were things that I had an idea were true when I started my research, but I’ve since collected many concrete examples of these phenomena and I am understanding the motivations behind them more depth. I’ve also observed how students use away messages very differently when they are at home, on break, for example. This being a yearlong study, I had the opportunity to make this comparison.
This semester I hope to analyze the data that I’ve already collected as well as gather more through continuing monitoring my volunteer’s away messages, as well as conducting interviews and focus groups to find out more. When I’m finished, I hope to have written an in-depth account of the role that away messages play in the lives of college students and the functions that they have taken on, well beyond being status messages.
Shapp is a Reeder House Scholar, a peer tutor, and a writing associate. She is president of the French Club and is a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. Shapp also plays in the flute ensemble, sings with the concert choir, and serves as an usher at the Williams Center for the Arts.