Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

126 Angelika Fröhlich & Sonja Lux
Communication using the Internet Relay Chat [IRC] program is written, and users are
spatially distant, but it is also synchronous. It is a written or rather typed form of
communication that is transmitted, received and responded to within a time frame that
has formerly been only thought relevant to spoken communication (quoted in Runkehl et
al. 1998:83).
In the end, it must be left to the personal believes of every one where he or she
decides to rank chatting among the oral or the written forms of communication
(for further reference see Wirth 2002, Hess-Lüttich & Wilde 2003, Thaler 2003).
In our opinion chat communication should not be considered as a mixture, nor
should one aspire to squeeze it in on the axis between the established forms of
communication, but consider it as a phenomenon of its own – something many
researchers already do (Wenz 1998, Runkehl et al. 1998, Crystal 2000, Fix 2001,
Beisswenger 2002).
In this article, we would nonetheless like to go a bit further and not only add
another description to the already existing ones, concerning one chat room or a
single aspect of – for example German – chatting behaviour, but try to compare
the chatting behaviour of two different cultures: the German and the Russian. We
feel that a comparison might shed a new light on the whole area of cybercommunication
as it might contribute to answering the question whether the
Internet is just another new communication channel we have to get adapted to or
whether it constitutes a whole culture of its own – in which case, cultural
differences should be minimized or even completely obliterated.
Chapter 2 will give a rather short overview of the different kinds of computermediated
communication and place chat communication in this field. Furthermore,
some of its properties will be explained.
The problems when comparing computer-mediated communication (from
now onwards CMC) in different cultures will be addressed in the 3rd chapter.
Whether the ethnic culture or the ‘culture’ of the Internet has a greater influence
on CMC is put up for discussion by a comparison of the conditions of Internet
access.
In the next chapter, we will introduce our sample and shortly explain the
method we used to gather and analyze the sample that will be given in extracts in
due course.
In the 5th chapter, we will separate the different aspects that seemed worth of
investigation, either because of their similarity or their dissimilarity. We will deal
with the contents and the topics of the typical chat communication, the greeting
and the parting set phrases and the use of nonverbal signs that are used to replace
facial, gestural or otherwise physical signs and thereby help to interpret what is
said.
In section 6, we will draw a conclusion, recounting our results, on how
similar we saw the behaviour of the German and the Russian chatters. This will
help to form an opinion about whether or not the Internet can be seen as a culture