Linguistic Features of Political Blogs in English and Lithuanian
Linguistic Features of Political Blogs in English and Lithuanian

Summary/Abstract: A blog or weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. The communicative purpose of weblogs is to share content with others through the Web; the information, however, varies according to the blog types, such as news, commentary, journals, etc. Additionally, blogs have some characteristics of traditional genres, such as diary or anthology, etc., as well as some features of Netspeak, the language common to the Internet. Thus the object of this article is the blogs written by British (Elspeth Attwooll, Richard Corbett and Robert Sturdy) and Lithuanian Members of the European Parliament (Laima Andrikienė, Vytautas Landsbergis and Justas Paleckis) written in 2007. The aim of this article is to describe and compare the linguistic features of political blogs in English and Lithuanian. The genre analysis methods are used; however, this article concentrates only on the analysis of linguistic features. It was noted that the blogs by British and Lithuanian MEPs are not homogeneous linguistically, as a mixture between formal (e.g., terms, formal vocabulary, long complicated sentences, etc.) and informal (e.g., colloquial, expressive vocabulary, interrogatory and exclamatory sentences, etc.) language may be noted. However, in Lithuanian a more informal vocabulary dominates, the language is also more vivid, personal and emotional, a more distinct personal stylistic variation is apparent. In both cases computer-mediated communication features are not dominant.

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