The goal of this article is to explore the manifestation of culture in language usage posted by McDonald’s Facebook site operators and the accompanying replies posted by fans on the sites in Taiwan and the USA, utili...The goal of this article is to explore the manifestation of culture in language usage posted by McDonald’s Facebook site operators and the accompanying replies posted by fans on the sites in Taiwan and the USA, utilizing the collectivism-individualism dimension suggested by Hofstede’s model of culture. Data were gathered from the whole year of 2012 on the official McDonald’s Facebook sites in the two countries. A semantic network analysis tool, Wolfpak, was used to analyze the words generated from the postings written by Facebook site operators and fans. In general, the study found support for cultural differences through word usage from official McDonald’s Facebook site operators and fans between Taiwan and the USA. It appeared that Taiwan Residents Facebook culture is characterized with the creation of a “we-identity”, with dependence more on people in authority, and a focus on money and materialism;whereas American Facebook culture is characterized with an “I-identity”, with less dependence on people in authority, and more focus on self-interests.展开更多
文摘The goal of this article is to explore the manifestation of culture in language usage posted by McDonald’s Facebook site operators and the accompanying replies posted by fans on the sites in Taiwan and the USA, utilizing the collectivism-individualism dimension suggested by Hofstede’s model of culture. Data were gathered from the whole year of 2012 on the official McDonald’s Facebook sites in the two countries. A semantic network analysis tool, Wolfpak, was used to analyze the words generated from the postings written by Facebook site operators and fans. In general, the study found support for cultural differences through word usage from official McDonald’s Facebook site operators and fans between Taiwan and the USA. It appeared that Taiwan Residents Facebook culture is characterized with the creation of a “we-identity”, with dependence more on people in authority, and a focus on money and materialism;whereas American Facebook culture is characterized with an “I-identity”, with less dependence on people in authority, and more focus on self-interests.
