Findings

The data gathered in our experiments allows us to empirically test whether or not the expectations about cultural differences from the literature also hold in the new form of video call communication.

Based on Wong (2000), we expected the Mandarin native speaker to wait longer until they interrupted the muted speaker. In our experiments, however, the average time of 4.65s (Mandarin natives) and 4.39s (Dutch natives) showed no significant difference.

Nevertheless, we were able to observe a number of strategies used by the Mandarin native speakers to acknowledge the face threat of their interruption that were used less frequently by our Dutch participants. Firstly, 66% of the Chinese/Taiwanese participants paused before their second attempt at interrupting us, while all Dutch directly repeated their initial statements without pause.

Secondly, we find that only 20% of the interviewed Dutch people smiled while interrupting, while every single Chinese/Taiwanese participant smiled. Based on Burnet et al. (2012) and Martin et al. (2017) we may interpret this as an attempt to acknowledge the face-threat of the interruption. An interesting observation was that one of our Dutch participants even dropped their smile while interrupting.

Thirdly, the Mandarin native speakers made more use of mitigating lexical certainty modifiers such as “I think”, “not really” etc. which made their statements seem less direct. 5 out of 6 of the Mandarin native participants used such an expression, while only 2 out of the 5 Dutch participants did. One of the Chinese/Taiwanese individuals even used two lexical certainty modifiers during their interruption.

Fourthly, 50% of Chinese/Taiwanese natives addressed the interviewer by name when indicating to them that they are muted for the first time, while none of the Dutch participants did so.