Publications
Publication details [#8858]
Publication type
Unpublished manuscript
Publication language
English
Keywords
Abstract
For the last 20 years, Computer Mediated Communication has grown to dominate the daily communication of many individuals all over the world. Given the mixture of various forms of media and mediums embodied in CMC, what exactly CMC is and how it relates to traditional forms of discourse remains disputed. This paper will present a case study of internet discourse to address the use of metaphor in the medium of the 'video blog', the CMC medium in which individuals post videos of themselves giving spoken 'diary entries' to be commented on and replied to by other video bloggers. This case study will focus on an exchange hosted by the popular video site YouTube in which two personalities post related videos in the form of a dialog regarding a matter the two dispute. We will investigate the extent to which the video bloggers process their own perception of and emotions about the disputed matter using metaphorical language and the extent to which this metaphorical language is intertransactional and shared between the two. Findings will show that although cluster metaphor phenomena can be observed in some instances, the intertransactional metaphor usage typical of face-to-face spoken discourse is absent in this 'dialog'. These findings will be implicated in the discussion of defining CMC in terms of traditional discourse and the limitations of conceptualizing of video blogging as dialog.
(Stephen Pihlaja)