Electronic Complaints

The interest in computer-mediated communication (CMC) has vastly risen over the recent years. Nevertheless, crosscultural differences in CMC have received little attention so far, especially with regard to complaining behaviour. This book therefore contributes to this still unexplored research area by comparing British English and German complaints in CMC, precisely on eBay. The empirical study statistically analyses online complaints taken from the feedback forum of this online auction house and shows both similarities and differences in the way speakers of the two cultures formulate their online complaints. Additionally, the impact the specific online context may have on users' speech act performance is reviewed. Given that cultural differences may lead to misunderstandings in cross-cultural electronic communicative situations, this book is not only of interest to different fields of pragmatics, but also to e-commerce and is hence of economic interest.

Marja E. Meinl holds a PhD in English Linguistics and a teaching degree for secondary schools in English, Biology and Education, both from the University of Bonn. She works as a teacher. Her research focuses on pragmatics, second language acquisition, (im)politeness research and crosscultural analysis of computer-mediated communication.