Language used in web 2.0 communication tools: the case of corporate weblogs

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the language used in weblogs, which is one of the cybergenres of the Web 2.0 communication that is widely used in many communication contexts, both formal and informal. Some attention has been paid to this cybergenre from the field of discourse analysis (Herring et al. 2005). The attention of this research will be focused on the study of the specific language used in one type of weblogs, namely, corporate weblogs. These blogs are published by or with the support of an organization to reach thatorganization's goals (Fredrik 2004). Three well-known corporate weblogs have been selected as the object of the present study, those are, the Starbucks’ blog, the General Motors’ weblog and the Dropbox’s weblog. The focus of this study is to analyse the language used in theseblogs in order to know to what extent formality features are used and how they shape the discourse type employed in these types of blogs. The variables taken into account for the study are: first, formality features (i.e., formal or informal language) found in the entry and comments that will be analysed and, second, discourse features (i.e., written or spoken discourse) found in the weblogs that will be analysed. The main results of this study show 1) the informal language used in corporate weblogs, and 2) the hybrid nature (i.e., a mixture between written and spoken language) of blogs concerning the language employed in them (Ruiz-Garrido & Ruiz-Madrid 2011). These results are discussed and suggestions for further research are given.