Investigating Blawgs through corpus linguistics : issues of generic integrity

Today research in linguistics and discourse analysis is increasingly turning its attention to web-mediated communication, looking at genres which – whether they be derived from migration of traditional genres to the web, or generated anew in the Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environment (Hoffman/Novak 1996) – exhibit properties that are peculiar to this environment (e.g. hypertextuality, dispersion across different layers of the hypertext, configuration in lexias, etc.), making them at least partially different from traditional printed texts. Hence the question of whether the repertoire of analytical tools developed for the latter is suitable for use in the analysis of web-mediated genres. This question has been posed in various methodological perspectives (i.e. text linguistics: e.g. Garzone 2002; genre analysis: e.g. Askehave/Ellerup Nielsen 2005, Garzone 2007; Giltrow/Stein 2009; Santini/Meheler/Sharoff 2010; argumentation theory: Carter 2000; Lewiński 2010; Degano 2012, etc.) This chapter focuses on the weblog, a relatively ‘young’ web-mediated genre, which has traditionally been seen as characterised by three main constitutive features – the reverse chronology of its entries, the frequent updating, and the combination of links with personal commentary (cf. e.g. Miller/Shepherd 2004: 4; Herring/Kouper et al. 2005: 1) – and by a typically individualistic existential dimension, having originated as a form of communication especially suitable for self expression (Herring/Scheidt et al. 2005; Miller/Shepherd 2004, 2009; Garzone 2012). Another recurrent peculiarity of the blog is that in most cases it consists of two different text formats, posts and comments, which are communicatively heterogeneous and have different characteristics. This chapter uses corpus linguistics to investigate the genre of the weblog, starting with a discussion of the criteria to be applied in the construction of a corpus of texts belonging to this genre, in consideration of its distinctive characteristics, first and foremost the presence of comments in addition to posts. In particular, the analysis focuses on the so called ‘blawgs’, i.e. blogs used for the dissemination of legal knowledge and for debate in the field of the law. This is one of a diversified range of textual forms in specialised and professional communication into which blogs have evolved, largely losing their original individualistic dimension. Blawgs are quite numerous today being used for various different purposes, e.g. academic and professional duties, forms of scholarship, scholarly conversations and exchanges, instant academic publication (Berman 2006, 2007; Kerr 2006; Solum 2006; Volokh 2006). They also represent a genre that enables writers in this area of specialization to reach much larger audiences than those traditionally addressed. The main purpose of this chapter is to explore the distinctive features of the blawg as a genre in order to verify the degree to which it has changed evolving from a personal, diary-like format at the intersection between private and public (Miller/Shepherd 2004) into a form of academic, professional or journalistic expression, and whether this evolution has been so extensive as to jeopardise its generic integrity. A further aim is to assess the degree of variation within the genre, considering different types of law blogs. The corpus on which this study is based comprises texts from five legal blogs, three from the UK and two from the US, and is examined on the basis of textual evidence retrieved by means of computerized analysis, using Wordsmith Tools 5.0 (Scott 2011). The traits considered are part of the core generic features of the blawg, with special attention for indicators that are associated with the personal/existential component, and in particular self-mention (Hyland 2001), as well as the lexical verbs associated with it, especially metadiscursive and narrative verbs. Some other elements of metadiscourse are also examined as providing evidence of a strong personal authorial presence, in keeping with the originally personal and individualistic character of the genre. In order to identify the peculiarities of the texts analysed within the more general picture of legal communication, the data obtained from the blawg corpus are compared with data relative to other types of (meta)legal texts: research papers included in the law section of the CADIS corpus (courtesy of University of Bergamo, group coordinated by M. Gotti), and with awards from Kluwer Bank, issued from 1998 to 2002. In addition to the literature on web communication referred to above, the specific analytical toolkit deployed in this research includes studies on blogs from various disciplinary perspectives (e.g. Blood 2002; Herring/Kouper et al. 2005; Herring & Paolillo 2006; Puschmann 2007; Giltrow/Stein eds 2009; Myers 2009; Grieve/Biber et al. 2010) as well as studies of law blogs, mainly by legal scholars (e.g. Caron 2006; Kerr 2006). References Askehave, Inger / Ellerup Nielsen, Anne 2004. Webmediated Genres – A Challenge to Traditional Genre Theory. Working Paper nr. 6. 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