Internet Conversation: The New Challenges of Digital Dialogue

Abstract

Traditionally, dialogue has been conceived as communicative interaction that consists of turn-taking, alternating roles and face-to-face communication. New forms of digital communication require a revision of this definition. The fact that the interlocutors are not physically present, the extent to which they know each other and the potential multiplicity by creating virtual identities generates a rhetoric whose content is sometimes difficult to retrieve. This work uses the Conversation Analysis methods to describe these “electronic conversations” to determine whether they follow the prototypical structures and functioning of dialogue, and the strategies used by interlocutors to achieve their effectiveness.