Language and Power in Blogs

“In this innovative study, Bolander draws on interactional and discourse analysis to examine the negotiation of power relations in the discourse of bloggers and their readers. With its solid theoretical grounding, robust methodology and rich findings, this book is likely to become a standard reference in this neglected area of computer-mediated discourse analysis.”

“This volume constitutes an important contribution to the emerging field of research on relational work in computer-mediated discourse and interaction, and represents an excellent original study of such issues in the context of blogging. As computer-mediated communications have become an increasingly important part of our everyday lives, it is clear that any theorisation of relational work and (im)politeness is incomplete without an account of such phenomena in computer-mediated communications. The author has produced perceptive and empirically-grounded analyses of the ways in which power and (dis)agreements are achieved in blog posts and comments, thereby advancing our understanding of such key pragmatic phenomena in very important ways. This book is thus an essential read not only for anyone interested in the pragmatics of CMC, but indeed anyone interested in the pragmatics relationality more broadly.”

“Language and Power in Blogs presents innovative research on the interface of text linguistics, discourse analysis and computer-mediated communication and combines a qualitative with a quantitative approach in a mixed methodology research design. The text compels with its clear structure and friendly reader guidance as well as ample illustrations of the theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings of the study. Bolander’s results convincingly demonstrate that it is crucial to pay attention to the social as well as the medium factors that shape online interaction and to take the dynamic creation of interactional and relational patterns into account when addressing issues of power in social practice.”