“Physical” Features of Invitation Discourse on SNS: A Contrastive Study between Native Speakers of Japanese and Malay

Abstract

This study aims to clarify the physical features of invitation discourse used on Social Networking Services (SNS) by comparing the use of Japanese native speakers (JNS) and Malay native speakers (MNS). In this study, discourse data collected through role-play techniques written by the Japanese speakers and the Malay speakers using SNS was analysed from the perspectives of “message sending format” and “use of terminal punctuation marks and symbols”. The results showed that the Japanese speakers often prioritise “topic parallelism” and send lengthy messages in email format. On the other hand, the Malay speakers tend to prioritise “immediacy” and often repeat messages in chat form. It also became clear that the Japanese speakers frequently break sentences to enhance readability, while Malay speakers tend to use the “reply” function heavily and omit terminal punctuation marks and symbols. These results show that the physical features of the message also strongly reflect the cross-cultural normative consciousness.