Chinese Learners’ Japanese Verbal Behavior Styles When Using Cell Phones: Comparing Text and Voice Messages

Abstract

In the present study, an experiment was conducted to collect data of Chinese learners’ Japanese usage. Multiple methods of content analysis and discourse analysis were employed to compare their verbal behavior styles in politeness strategies and felicity of conversations between text and voice messages when it comes to the use of cell phones. As a result, the correlation coefficients between the coders were very high in both ratings. Different from their grammatical errors, no significant differences were found for medium in the politeness strategies or felicity of conversations, but the main effects for gender were detected in both cases. Implications and issues for future research are discussed in terms of Japanese language learners’ use of cell phone text messages and voice messages.