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Diversity in On-Line Discussions 171

males adopted in Week 6 or later. It is also worth noting that the only
two non-adopters (shown as Week 11) were women. When viewed by
culture, in Figure 2, we see that all but one white American adopted
in the first two weeks, while a majority of the members of the other
groups adopted after Week 3. Again, it is worth noting that the only
two non-adopters (shown as Week 11) were in this category as well.

CONVERSATIONAL DYNAMICS

There were some notable differences in communication styles with
respect to cultural and gender differences revealed in the analyses of
the transcripts. One key area of difference seems to center on how
differences of opinion are handled and whether or not there is a per-
ception of “winning” or “losing” in the process. Drawing from Lakoff
(1975, 1979, 1990), Tannen (1990) explains that systematic differ-
ences in conversational style can lead to misunderstandings in both
cross-cultural and cross-gender communication. Citing Gumperz
(1982), Tannen (1990) also describes the best method to discover
what is going on is to look for key episodes where communication
has broken down. This process involves “identifying segments in
which trouble is evident” and “looking for culturally patterned dif-
ferences in signaling meaning that could account for trouble” (6).

Figure 1
Adoption by Week by Gender