Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

Chat Behaviour Intercultural 131
different parts of the world. The starting point of this hype was much earlier in
Germany than in Russia. Due to economic reasons, very few citizens in Russia
held a personal computer and additionally were connected to the World Wide
Web.
According to figures by the Fond Obshestvennoe Mnenie (The Public
Opinion Foundation), the number of users in Russia rose to 28.7 million (25%) in
the first half of 2007. Still, a large part consists of Muscovites (5 million, 45% of
Muscovites) and citizens of other Russian big cities, where the infrastructure is
better. As the number of frequent users in 2002 amounted to 9% only 5 , the
increase indicates that there is yet more to expect in the following years.
The annual study of 2002 by ARD and ZDF revealed a relatively high
number of users in Germany: 28.3 million users, that is 44,1% of the German
population 6 ; had used the Internet. This number rose to 62.7% in 2007. 7 40.8
million Germans have access to the Internet and use it regularly.
Keeping these numbers in mind, we have to consider that a typical behaviour
might be influenced by technical advantages of German chatters as these typically
have known the Internet longer than Russians. Differences in the behaviour of
Russian chatter might therefore occur on account of the technical lag between the
two nations. As the Russians only joined the ‘chatmania’ recently, they are not
that used to the ‘old ways’, when chat programmes did not yet provide the
innumerable features – for example the direct implementation of smiley pictures –
they provide today.
4. Method
In order to get an eligible sample, we decided on the following procedure:
We went to chat rooms that showed a minimum of at least 200 registered
users to make sure that the chatters showed some kind of variety. We then
recorded approximately ten minutes of the ongoing communication without
interacting ourselves. We repeated the procedure during different times of the day
and in different chat rooms to make sure the sample was not distorted by
untypically behaving chatters.
We then viewed the samples regarding some aspects we expected to be
relevant for an intercultural comparison. These were the following:
− Greeting and parting behaviour (formulas, length, (im)politeness)
− Topics
− Nonverbal behaviour (application of smileys, acronyms, pictures and inflectives,
iteration of letters/punctuation marks)
The results of this comparison will be presented in the next chapter.
5
The Public Opinion Foundation
6
Only adults, that is Germans of 14 and older, were taken into account.
7
Das Erste