The development of science and technology has made it not only possible but very convenient for people living in different parts of the world to communicate with each other, thus bringing forth a new form of communica...The development of science and technology has made it not only possible but very convenient for people living in different parts of the world to communicate with each other, thus bringing forth a new form of communication: computer-mediated communication (CMC). Text-based CMC is one of the most popular forms of CMC in which people send instant messages to others in different settings. Since this mode of interaction combines features of both the written and spoken language (Greenfield & Subrahmanyam, 2003), it's of great interest whether it follows the same sequential rule as the telephone conversation. However, compared to telephone conversations, computer-mediated communication has received much less attention, let alone text-based CMC. The existing body of literature mostly focuses on content analysis and linguistic features but neglects the sequential organization of such interaction (Paolillo, 1999; Greenfield and Subrahmanyam, 2003; Herring, 1999). In light of this, this paper examines the opening moves of instant message exchanges among Chinese adults in an attempt to find out the unique features characterizing the way they open an online chat. The framework that was chosen for data analysis was the sequential model proposed by Schegloff for American telephone openings.展开更多
文摘The development of science and technology has made it not only possible but very convenient for people living in different parts of the world to communicate with each other, thus bringing forth a new form of communication: computer-mediated communication (CMC). Text-based CMC is one of the most popular forms of CMC in which people send instant messages to others in different settings. Since this mode of interaction combines features of both the written and spoken language (Greenfield & Subrahmanyam, 2003), it's of great interest whether it follows the same sequential rule as the telephone conversation. However, compared to telephone conversations, computer-mediated communication has received much less attention, let alone text-based CMC. The existing body of literature mostly focuses on content analysis and linguistic features but neglects the sequential organization of such interaction (Paolillo, 1999; Greenfield and Subrahmanyam, 2003; Herring, 1999). In light of this, this paper examines the opening moves of instant message exchanges among Chinese adults in an attempt to find out the unique features characterizing the way they open an online chat. The framework that was chosen for data analysis was the sequential model proposed by Schegloff for American telephone openings.
