[Air-l] naturally occurring conflicts?

[Jonna Ahti]

Hello again,

Citerar Ellis Godard <egodard at 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 at helsinki.fi