Qualitative Study of the German Modal Particle ja in Internet Messaging

In the German language, lexical items classified as “particles” are used extensively in everyday speech and often reflect a native-like competence or “feel” for the language. This qualitative study examines the interactional environment of the modal particle ja in message postings made on the German version of Facebook known as studiVZ. Interactions between speakers in an online environment may provide (for the first time) naturally occurring, spontaneously-produced text-based examples of particle usage. I collected and analyzed 26 interactions that contain the modal particle ja within an assessment. Using conversation analytic methodology, this study considers the structure of the conversation, the effect of ja in preference organization, and the usage of emoticons to show how the particle ja functions in internet conversations. As preliminary conclusions about the usage of ja, I have found that assessments with ja occur as proffered negative and positive assessments, and also as self-deprecations. Assessments with ja have additionally been found as responses to a question, responses to an announcement or news, and responses to an initial assessment. These assessments containing ja perform a variety of actions, including congratulating, thanking, declining an invitation, criticizing and reproaching a co-participant, and disagreeing with a prior assessment. The modal particle ja may function to imply agreement, as the majority of the examined assessments were either agreed with or not responded to in a subsequent post. Moreover, ja may function to signal the commenter’s assumption that his/her evaluation will not be disagreed with due to available evidence in support of the assessment; indeed, all of the assessments with ja in this data corpus refer to either shared knowledge or visual evidence that both participants have access to. Due to the complexity of particles, it is difficult to teach particle usage to non-native speakers of German. However, this study contributes to the German language learning community as a resource providing authentic examples of how and when particles are used.No embarg