Linguistic and cultural features and the Internet?

    The Internet represents a model for the unification of mankind, being the vanguard of the globalization of the modern world.
    Interestingly, when creating a site, the linguistic and cultural features of future users are rarely taken into account.
    Are they there? And whether it is necessary to pay attention to them?



    All these considerations are inspired by the article “Website Navigation: Linguistic and Cultural Features”.
    Often when creating websites they are guided by the principle of the average user. Our future users are all network users. That is, there is a unification - all under one comb.
    But you should take into account not only the quality of the planned target audience (age, gender, financial situation, values, etc.), but also the mentality, linguistic and cultural characteristics of those for whom we create a site.
    On the one hand, it seems strange, but why do we need this? It seems we understand the goals and objectives of users. We create an interface / website that meets their needs and that’s all in the hat.
    Google also thought so when he made the Google Maps service for Japan. But they did not take into account cultural characteristics. They consisted of the fact that there they are not looking for addresses, they are looking for places of interest. That is, not the City, Street, House number, but the location next to such a temple, etc.
    Miscalculation? Imperfection? It’s hard to judge. The template and the general approach to creating interactive applications dictated their requirements, which went against the mentality.
    Also, an interesting observation can be made about Western sites. In the West, the Protestant ethics are strong in many respects (see Weber), the values ​​there are individuality and labor. This value system is reflected in the structure of Western web resources. So, the section of the corporate website of a Western company often contains a page called "Biography of Executives." On this page, the management of the company is presented in detail, a list of personal achievements is provided.
    The author of the article correctly noted:


    On Western resources, the phrase, when clicked, the user gets to the corresponding page, is formulated as "How To Use", and on Russian - as "Help". In the semantics of the word “help”, in our opinion, there is a certain passive installation: a user who has lost orientation, by clicking on the link, expects real help. An English-language resource on a similar page usually offers only instructions for using the site, sometimes far from easy to grasp. The collectivism of the Russians forms the expectation of help in the situation of the user and the willingness to help - in the situation of the owner (moderator) of the resource.



    So are there any linguistic and cultural features? Should I consider them? What other examples of such features are we forgetting about?

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