Knowing the sex of the baby (or at least thinking we know the sex of the baby) has been making this experience much more real. I told Yoko today that having a girl will be the end of me as the two of them will be able to get me to do anything they want, any time they want. Yoko said that it will be great because the both of them will like me so much. I suppose this will be a great feeling, two women that adore you.
Dissertation Proposal follows:
In the last fifteen years, a new form of written discourse has emerged on the Internet. Exhibiting characteristics of both spoken and written discourse, personal narrative on the Internet has become a genre unto itself. Particularly, the recent phenonom of "blog" writing (keeping an online "diary" that is publicly accessible) appears to be developing as a powerful tool in modern discourse. Although some work has been done on "blog" writing from a sociological perspective (references here), no work has been done to describe "blog" writing in linguistic terms. What are the linguistic traits of the "blog" genre?Comments?
This research will seek to take the first step in outlining what makes "blog" writing unique from other kinds of written reporting, and examine how blogging exhibits traits of both spoken and written discourse to create a distinct personal narrative, while also investing the how tools new to Internet discourse (such as linking and image posting) shape content and style. The paper will also discuss whether or not the term "blog discourse" is ultimately too broad for general description. The implications of this research should have direct application for blogging software developers as well as linguistics mapping the trends in discourse on the Internet. If models of personal narrative can be to other data points (such as age, gender, or race), developers can more accurately produce software that caters to their target audiences.