Abstract
The important role of conjunctions in computer-mediated communication (CMC) was first highlighted by Baron (2010). She focused on so-called utterance break pairs and analysed the linguistic means used to signal cohesion between the utterance chunks in Instant Messages. According to Baron’s findings, conjunctions are relevant for creating coherence not only within a single text, but also between utterance pairs. According to an observation made by Günthner (2012), utterance break pairs in CMC are sometimes jointly produced by chat partners, e.g. when one chat partner expands on a previous message of another person. In conversation analysis, the term collaborative production is used for an utterance that is not produced by a single person but jointly by at least two.
In the present study, I will introduce some findings of a project that investigated the use of conjunctions in the German Facebook corpus DiDi (Frey et al., 2016). I will focus on the use of the conjunction weil (‘because’) in German Facebook texts and analyse how it is used as a cohesive device in cross-message usages such as question-response pairs, utterance break pairs and collaborative productions with respect to word order variation in contemporary German. In Standard German, weil is used as a subordinating conjunction, which causes verb-final word order. In spoken language, weil is also frequently used as a coordinating conjunction, causing verb-second word order. Regarding CMC, recent studies show a clear preference for verb-final word order, e.g. on Wikipedia discussion pages (Storrer, 2019).
The results of our study show that subordinate weil-clauses are used in both utterance break pairs and in collaborative productions whereas coordinate weil-clauses are used in utterance break pairs of a single user. Thus, word order variation can be used to disambiguate reference in chats, particularly regarding non-adjacent utterance break pairs.