The purpose of the research is to find out what matters in maintaining online conversation between Chinese. QQ is a very popular online chatting tool among Chinese, but little research has been conducted examining how Chinese maintain their online conversations in this medium. Chinese conversation pays more attention to the fostering of the relationship, both in the F2F interaction and QQ online chatting. F2F interaction in Chinese everyday conversation is widely exploited as a strategic site for the analysis of the manner in which humans use verbal and non-verbal cues to maintain their interaction, especially in such areas as sentence-final particles and backchannels. The research selected two QQ conversations between two female interlocutors. Findings presented from descriptive analysis show that backchannels of “en” and “oh” receipts are important tools for alignment in QQ online chatting, and who initiates conversation matters in the conversation. Discussions are made in the comparison of the Chinese F2F interaction and QQ one-to-one online interaction.
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