Abstract
While arguing in face-to-face communication is rather well investigated, there are almost no analyses on similar sequences of internet relay chats. Users of the IRC often revert to patterns of face-to-face communication, as it is for example shown in works on the phatic communication. But a lot of typical aspects of the modality "arguing" - as interruptions, overlaps, prosodic features etc. - can not be realized in the IRC. In exchange, this communication technology also creates new possibilities that are not available in face-to-face communication. In this article, I would like to ask what the consequences of these circumstances are for sequencies of arguing in the IRC. The main questions are: