> sadly `this.$el` doesn't work but `this.$('#textchat')` would work, but for that i'll have to bind `this` too . 

Just bind it like this `this.textChat.on('chat:type-start', this._showTypingNotification, this); // notice the third arg which is the context`

> Just a thought, would it be better to define the `showTypingNotification` and `clearTypingNotification` inline as each is hardly 2 lines?

We generally used the private method pattern all over the place, it would feel a bit strange to suddenly have these two behaving differently. Though back in time it was intended to unit test implementation, which is a strategy we recently discarded; I suppose we could question moving back to callback passed inline, but this work is definitely not part of this PR.