Identity, emotions and cultural differences in English and Polish online comments

Publisher： John Benjamins Publishing Company

E-ISSN： 2214-3165|4|1|47-71

ISSN： 2214-3157

Source： International Journal of Language and Culture, Vol.4, Iss.1, 2017-01, pp. : 47-71

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Abstract

The focus of the present paper is to examine the extent to which the language used in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and online discourse emotional behavior are good predictors of individual and group cultural types and their identities. It is argued that the identity marking CMC interactants develop has to be stronger, more salient, and, possibly less ambiguous than that used in direct conversation and that the emotionality markers the users apply in their discussion, particularly those engaging negative emotions and reflecting negative judgments, are argued to be used by online discussants for the purpose of increasing the CMC commentators’ conversational visibility. The questions of cultural and linguistic divergence between English and Polish emotional communication patterns are the main points discussed. Three sets of corpus materials are used and the research methodology involves both the qualitative analysis of the emotion types as well as a quantitative (frequency) approach, particularly with respect to culture-specific corpus-generated collocation patterns.