Intermediary Virtual Dialogue in VKontakte Social Network vs. Immediate Live Dialogue: Functions and Structure

Abstract

A virtual dialogue in social networks is functionally parallel to a live one. The authors applied Dialogical Linguistics and Internet Linguistics to compare the substantive and structural features of a virtual dialogue in social networks with an oral live dialogue. The research objective was to identify and describe the invariant and variable features of a virtual dialogue and a live one. The virtual dialogue in the VKontakte social network was represented by an open public dialogue, an open anonymous dialogue, and an open personified dialogue. They were obtained from posts and comments in the public Anonymous; posts and comments on the public page Vesti; posts and comments on personal home pages of native Russian speakers. The samples of live conversations came from the collection of The Living Speech of an Ural City (1995). The analysis parameters included the image of the addressee, the initial conversational turns, the modes of dialogue management, and the methods of structural organization. The analysis yielded a substantive and structural typology of a virtual dialogue in social networks.

Keywords

• virtual dialogue
• oral dialogue
• social networking sites
• image of addressee
• initial communicative turns
• modes of dialogue management
• methods of dialogue structural organization