Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

Politeness and Social Dynamics in Chat Communication
Gabriel Dorta
Universidad Central de Venezuela
Until now, research about chat communication has not paid attention to some pragmatic
elements such as the peculiarities of the medium which influences the way in which
participants manage each communicative situation, their social relationships are defined
and negotiated, and politeness is expressed. In this paper, I will analyse the processes of
definition and negotiation of social relationships within politeness strategies. Politeness
will be considered as an intersubjective phenomenon which depends on its context of
occurrence and some particularities of this form of computer-mediated communication.
It represents a salient communicative behaviour in chats; it is put into practice to
overcome some restrictions of the medium and to express a partial commitment,
friendliness and closeness among participants.
1. Introduction
Due to the restriction of chat-rooms to the written communication channel,
research has so far been centered on the following aspects: i) the analysis of
typographical, lexical and syntactic features which are seen in most approaches as
part of the participants’ competences to achieve a successful exchange (cf.
Runkehl et al. 1998:112) ; ii) the description of elements related to written and
oral language features (cf. ibid:84; Bittner 2003:237) and iii) the emphasis on the
artificial and virtual character of the chatters’ social relationships (cf. Götzenbrucker
& Hummel 2001:203, among others). Chat communication is consequently
seen as a final product in such approaches. In this paper, chats will be
considered, on the contrary, as process-orientated. The mutual influence between
some peculiarities of this form of mediated communication and the participants’
linguistic behaviour can play an important role in the way chatters constitute and
negotiate their social relationships to express politeness. As I go along, answers
will be given to the following questions which have not yet been fully accounted
for: How do (un)acquainted people manage their interaction in a written medium?
In which way do they define and negotiate their social relationships? How is
politeness expressed in chat communication?
In chapter 2, I will describe and illustrate some of the peculiarities of the
medium under the concept of non-committal frame (Höflich & Gebhardt 2001).
After that, following Watts’ (2003) explanations, politeness will be defined as a