Neue Dialoge - alte Konzepte?: Die schriftliche Kommunikation via Smartphone

The first two paragraphs deal with the question of how the term dialogue is to be understood and how the terms dialogue and monologue are related. Then arguments for and against the assumption that written communication is a kind of interaction are discussed. Paragraph 4 points out the typical features of written interaction, using the example of WhatsApp - an internet-based instant messaging service which can be installed on a smartphone. In this context the following questions are discussed: how are the characteristics of such dialogues to be described? What distinguishes them from spoken dialogues? And why - compared to text messaging via mobile phones - do they constitute a new kind of dialogue? Paragraph 5 deals with Linell's (1998) concept of dialogism and investigates in what ways this concept is applicable to written interaction. Finally it is shown that not only spoken but also written dialogues may be described in the context of interactional linguistics and other well established research contexts. However, new descriptive methods are needed to do justice to the specific features of written interaction.