Hello again, Citerar Ellis Godard <egodard@csun.edu>:
But I don't know what you intend to mean by "naturally occurring". Is flaming somehow unnatural?
Actually yes, if I look at my data. It is of course sometimes hard to know whether a conflict is naturally occurring or if it is provoked by a hostile member. In my data most of the conflicts are caused by misunderstandings. Example: a: shut up just shut up shut up b: what?! b: do you mean that I should shut up??? c: she sings black eyed peas: shut up a: I'm singing black eyed peas b: ah, ok, good :-) Sometimes the members talk about the verbal duels they are taking part in which can be very intensive and rough. That intentionally conflict-seeking behavior I would categorize as flaming. But as I said these things will and have to be discussed in the dissertation. Also the cultural differences have to be taken into account: my data is from a public chat-room for the Swedish speaking minority in Finland. Similar data in Finnish would be much more aggressive and I assume it has partly to do with the sense of community the members create in different chat-rooms. regards, Jonna -- Ms. Jonna Ahti PhD student NORDICA - Department of Scandinavian Languages and Scandinavian Literature P.O.Box 24 00014 University of Helsinki Finland tel. +358-40-5625497 jonna.ahti@helsinki.fi