Blog for my project

Hello! Professor and my fellow classmates! I have finished my blog for the project and below is the website.
http://dennislointernetlinguisticslehman.blogspot.com/

Final Presentation - Netiquette

Hi guys!

For my presentation on Netiquette, I've created a site on WordPress. If you'd like to follow the presentation on your own portable devices, you can click here.

Search Engines and Ambiguity

I do not know about you, but I have been a victim of search engine ambiguity. I have searched for certain things online and at times the results came up of something completely out of topic. Search engines tend to come up with results that are most popular searches, or with the most "hits". For example, if you search the word "twister", what comes up first is the 1999 movie and then the game! How would the search engine know what I am trying to search? The possibilities could be endless.

               In the article "How Search Engines Might Interpret Ambiguous Queries Through Entity Tags" by Slawski states that whether you use a small amount of words or too many words when searching can be a problem for the engine to find the best results based on what you are trying to look for.  He goes on to say that for the engine to understand best your "query" would be to be as specific as possible--I'm paraphrasing. For example, speech/language in general is ambiguous as we may have learned in several Linguistics and Speech courses. It is understandable, that a computer can misinterpret your "query" because words and phrases can mean so many things. 

The solution to ambiguity? dis-am-big-uaty/ish? You know what I mean!

The more specific you are, the better your results would be (hopefully). The search engines uses these things called "tags" to try and identify your search. I have had experience using "tags" on Etsy.com where people buy and sell hand made products. I use to own a shop at Etsy and in order to get more views/results for your products, you would have to put as many tags as possible so that people will easily find your product.  For example, If you are trying to sell a painting you would use tags that would describe your painting in any way shape or form. The purpose behind "tagging" or "tags" is to identify your query with as many things possible that might relate to it.

                                                                  "Our Pattern-detecting Brain"

LLast, Lee writes in his article "SEO Ambiguity & Pattern Recognotion" that our brains searches for patterns, this is called "Paternicity". Consequently, Lee writes that our brains are hard wired for this and because of this we are prone to errors. There two types of errors he mentions, Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 error is when our brain believes patterns that aren't really there and type 2 is when our brains do not believe patterns, when the are truly there. So how does that relate to technology today? Well, technology has "tremendous advances toward algorithms that use pattern recognition effectively". In other words, technology is wired to detect patterns more effectively than our brains are wired to do. Therefore, it responds to ambiguous situations better than out brains. That is my understanding.  Have any thoughts, experiences or understanding on thee topics? 

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Hello Class
I need some help on my project. Please help me out by taking a quick survey. The link above will take you to the survey.

Thanks in Advance.

Codeswitching in SMS

Code switching is when a speakers alternates between two or more languages in the context of a single conversation. My proposal is to investigate the influence of emotional context and topic on code switching in CMC. I will base my analysis on exchanges between bilingual speakers that include myself and my mother. My method for collecting data will be quantifying and qualifying my SMS conversations with my mother. I will download these messages by emailing them from my phone back to my computer.

This experiment will continue for a two-week period where I expect to collect at least 100 text messages. In the event, there are not enough text messages or if the content is not relevant enough I shall collect some older text messages to enlarge my sample. I will base my analysis on the topic and emotional context behind the conversations. For the topic, I will concentrate my observation on familial vs. professional. The emotional context will be based on my own point of view. My mother’s emotional context is usually translated using emojis will help qualify the emotion behind the conversation. I will evaluate the frequency of intersentential and intrasentential code switching to try identifying any pattern within the context.

I intend to publish my findings exhaustively on a website. The website format will be decided depending on the size and quality of the material I deem necessary to present my results. A PowerPoint support will be used to present my results to the class.

It was having some trouble narrowing down my topic. I knew I wanted to do code-switching in SMS but didn't know what,who,how? I felt like I needed a little more clarification so I sent another proposal but it still needed work, I even asked some of my fellow classmates for their opinion. Since I know I had access to my text messages with my mother  I started downloading them (last Wednesday)  and putting them into different categories. I still more text messages and hope to get them this coming week.

Project: Multi-tasking

Well, the topic I will focus on for my project is multi-tasking while using communication devices of any sort (i.e. phone, computer, tablet etc). I want to know whether people believe that they are more productive or efficient while multi-tasking. For example, Are you really paying close attention to the professor while using your laptop or tablet in class? Questions like that will help reveal whether people are truly capable of multi-tasking and still be 100% or so attentive to whatever it is that they are doing.

At this point, I am in the process of making some revisions to my project proposal ;) I have also completed a survey at surveymonkey.com. It is an 8 question survey and It would be great if you guys can help me gather some data. If you would like to take the survey, please press here.

I created the survey just yesterday night, (Sunday April 27) and I have so far, 17 responses. It is an anonymous survey, so I cannot see who has responded but I can see the completed survey results. I sent some to family, friends, classmates and even lehman staff memebers (Particularly, the Early Childhood Education and Speech Dept staff) I thought I will give it a try to see if people really reply. It doesn't hurt to try!

Next, I will be gathering information based on statistics and other research data available on the internet. I have browsed and skimmed through some articles, but nothing has really caught my attention just yet.

That's all folks....For now!! :)

Project: Google Translate(II)

     I have started writing my article. At the beginning, I introduced the company, Google, including the founders, services that Google provides. After that, I introduced Google Translate, mentioning how it works, how many languages it supports, how it can be used. After that, I began to  discuss the problem of Google Translate.
      I have created couple examples and have them to be translated by Google Translate. My target languages are English, Korean, and Chinese. When there is a problem occurred, I put it in my article and describe what the problem is. For example, I have a sentence "Do you need anything?" translated from English into Korean. This sentence became "What do you have to do?" when it is in Korean. I started to investigate this sentence. At the same time, for the examples that translation problem occurs, I make changes on them such as replace a noun by another noun or use other modals instead.

      That was what I have done so far. Next, I will be looking for few more examples and find out what are the patterns of those weird translation.