Investigating Interaction Signs across Genres, Modes and Languages: The Example of OKAY

The paper presents results of a case study that compared the usage of OKAY across genre types (Wikipedia articles vs. talk pages), across media (spoken vs. written interaction), and across languages (German vs. French CMC data from Wikipedia talk pages). The cross-genre study builds on the results of Herzberg 2016, who compared the usage of OKAY in German Wikipedia articles with its usage in Wikipedia talk pages. These results also form the basis for comparing the CMC genre of Wikipedia talk pages with occurrences of OKAY in the German spoken language corpus FOLK. Finally, we compared the results on the usage of OKAY in German Wikipedia talk pages with the usage of OKAY in French Wikipedia talk pages. With our case study, we want to demonstrate that it is worthwhile to investigate interaction signs across genres and languages, and to compare the usage in written CMC with the usage in spoken interaction.