Evelinah Mathoho

Cultural Differences in Using a Telephone Answering Machine: Views on Conveying Information or Maintaining Relationships Evelinah Mathoho

Living in South Africa also known as " The Rainbow Nation" a title which epitomizes the country's cultural diversity. After reading Miyamoto and Schwarz (2006)'s assumption that "cultural goups who are particularly sensitive to the value of maintaining relationship, have difficulties in using answering machine" I then decided to attempt to ascertain whether there are specific differences in using recorded messaging among the various South African language groups that relate to either the conveying information or the establishing of a communicative relationship. This book considers how technological intervention may affect features of the primary mode of communication, i.e. it investigates whether spoken language transmitted by answering machine is significantly different in its function, than when the transmission is face to face and immediate, with the aim of finding out, whether people of different linguistic cultures react differently to new technologies such as answering machine. This book should be useful in intercultural communication, linguistic, cultural studies and related areas. Conversation analysis was used for analyzing speech samples.