Communication Registers of Online Students in the New Normal

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the shift to a new normal in the education aspect. With online learning, teachers resort to webinars, online classes, modular online classes, and other online educational platforms such as zoom and google classroom. In this time of the pandemic, the way the students transmit messages or communicate with their professors online has been changed compared to how they communicate during face-to-face classes. Communicating using these platforms necessitates that language be studied to find out whether there is a change of the level of formality students use in their spoken or written expressions. Using the Register and the Communication Theories, this descriptive study investigated the communication registers of online students in their messages sent to their professors through chat messenger, email, cellphone texts and other online apps.; the literal and deep structures expressed in the messages; and a listing of common lexicons used in various communication registers. Using content analysis, it was found out that the communication registers among students in this new normal include mostly online reaction signs sent casually. The casual messages carried deeper meanings with the most common lexicons as “Thank you”, “Good morning”, and “ma’am/madam/sir”. Therefore, the students can communicate freely online with a lesser level of formality to their professors and without the presence of physical, social, emotional, and psychological barriers. The study recommends that students communicate in other contexts like asking for help or showing appreciation; use other language registers such as frozen and intimate, aside from casual; communicate with their professors using proper writing mechanics such as capitalization, proper punctuation, and sentence structure; and use variety of lexicons instead of a repetitive use of same words, phrases, and expressions.