Blog as nominalization
Thursday, April 27
11:05 PM
The noun "blog" is a nominalization.
If we believe Peter Merholz's account of the coinage of "blog," it came from his splitting "weblog" into "we blog." Maybe he (or others) have a different analysis, but it seems to me like "we" is the subject and "blog" is verb.
The noun form follows naturally, but it still had to follow. Can we still say "blog" is a short form of "weblog"? Looks more like the result of a visual pun. Or something; I'm no etymologist.
I'd bring this up with Language Log if I hadn't already pestered them last week about "spaz."
Comments (5)
Hey Dan, how ya doin!
Certainly it's of interest to track down the actual historical path of a derivation. (Though there's no saying it's unique.)
But along with that let's not denigrate the synchronic status a word has in the (mental) lexicons of contemporary speakers. Here also there is a need for genuine scholarly investigation as distinct from mere (or even informed) speculation. Unfortunately, the latter is all I can offer now! :)
But in that spirit: Of course the nouns were both ('weblog' and 'blog') in place before the verb 'blog' could come along. So there's little ground for the label of nominalization.
I'm not sure of the context, but ... Remember the role of the label 'that's a nominalization' in pedagogic and editorial stylistics. Sometimes it clarifies what's wrong with a really messy construction. But at other times, having been elevated to something like a rule, it becomes cover for an otherwise-unexplained objection. Also, although indeed any V -> N (or A -> N) derivation might technically qualify a nominalization (and indeed might contribute to stylistic unpleasantness), typically the label is invoked when the derivation is done by affixing, and 'blog' (if assumed to be a V -> N derivation, which remains unlikely) might claim exemption from the stylistic "rule" against nominalizations on this ground.
Best regards,
Mitch
I said:
[quote]
Remember the role of the label 'that's a nominalization' in pedagogic and editorial stylistics
[/quote]
I meant to say 'rhetoric' in there. A piece of my own rhetorical stance I guess. Did I ever mmention at one point I was a Lector in the Little Red Schoolhouse, and then a writing tutor attached to a Common Core course? Nominalization was our enemy, and Joe Williams made a great case against it. But here I'm emphasizing that it was indeed a matter of making a case.
== Mitch
To blog is more of a verbalization (or whatever the term is) from the noun blog (which is weblog shortened).
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Open mouth, insert foot? Monday, April 24 1:01 AM So it turns out Jose van Dijck is not a man. I'm surprised I even made that assumption, when most weblog scholarship seems to be written by women.
But in any case: apologies. Not a mistake a copy editor should make, no matter what the first name.
My first draft is still getting its going over, so in the meantime I've been reading Genette's Narrative Discourse and trying to collect (published and/or well-known) blog definitions. More on both of those projects later.
Also: I guess I'm presenting a brief overview of my thesis (7 minutes or so) for "Works in Progress" this Friday. I don't know yet what I'm going to say, but (luckily) I also have to turn in an analytic abstract of the thesis this week...
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First draft Tuesday, April 18 2:27 AM The next journalist who uses the phrase "Internet blog" will be summarily executed.
So I finished the first draft around midnight, though I ended up spending another hour putting together the bibliography. I'm waaaay too lazy to reformat everything for my blog right now, but here's the Word file:
Thesis first draft
Congratulations for turning in your first draft! Looks like a lot of work already :-) I'm looking forward to reading the final version. Go! It's doable :-)
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Our bold blog definition Sunday, April 16 4:43 PM Here are the paragraphs on the blog that I added to my thesis. This was meant to be one paragraph, but, well, it needed to be much longer before I was satisfied with it. It's now a section after the intro called "the blog." All footnotes that are hyperlinks have been changed to off-site links. There are some sources I'd like to consult — Nils had to do something like this too, apparently — but I'll do that at my leisure after I turn the first draft in.
Though this essay's primary concern is explicating the diary weblog, it would be futile to attempt a non-arbitrary theorization of the diary weblog if the blog itself were left undefined — and so the blog itself presents the first definitional problem. There are, in fact, very few essential blog features. Blogs are a kind of online writing, and so must appear online: blogs that have been published in book form become "blooks." Blogs are published on websites, though their content may be accessible through syndication in another medium like email or Really Simple Syndication. Blogs are composed of one or more individual entries or "posts" which, though usually text, can also consist of still images, audio, video, or any combination of these media. Once there is more than one post, a blog is arranged so that more recent entries are displayed before older ones: this is the system Walker and others call "reverse-chronological order." In order to make the reverse-chronological ordering perceptible, blogs "time-stamp" entries, usually explicitly ("posted at 2:23 a.m. on February 15, 2006") but sometimes implicitly. The blog "Overheard in New York" is a good example of the latter category: individual posts are not time-stamped; instead, those closer to the heading for a given day are presumed to be more recent. While this list of traits is somewhat preliminary — in the taxonomy section, I'll offer a more logically rigorous method for defining genres — for the purposes of this paper these are the only features essential to the blog.
Many commentators would disagree with this assertion, so it's important to note some of the common features often erroneously considered essential, foremost among them the notion that blogs are "self-published." Blogs are often described as "self-published," but while it's true that publishing your own blog is incredibly simple, the blogosphere contains many prominent examples which fail to live up to that term, whatever it's taken to mean. Most bloggers use third-party web-publishing sites like Blogger or LiveJournal, instead of writing all the code themselves. Some bloggers have written their entries on paper and had other people type and publish them. At other blogs, for example those hosted by MSNBC, editors or copy editors review submissions before they're posted. And blogs like "PostSecret," a collection of postcards, deal exclusively in content submitted by other people and selected by an editor. While it's obvious that blogs do not go through the traditional print publishing process, many of the steps in that process can carry over to web-publishing. The idea that self-publishing is crucial to the weblog persists in part because it is well-matched to the individualistic, tech-optimist ethos still prevalent in the blogosphere.[1]
Other blog definitions exclude old, new, or unpopular weblogs. Many theorists dwell on the "frequent" nature of weblog posts, but while a blog like "Boing Boing" might have several dozen entries a day, other blogs go weeks, even months without entries — there's no cut-off point at which "Tequila Mockingbird," a popular diary weblog currently four months into an unannounced hiatus, will cease to be a blog. Moreover, the same defense holds for archived or defunct blogs — the genre status of "ToTo247's Xanga Site" was not altered when the blogger's tragic death made future updates impossible. Theorists have also excluded newly-created blogs from their definitions, by mentioning a "series" of posts, for example. While it's true that a blog with only one post doesn't yet contain updates in reverse-chronological order, most readers and many web-publishing sites (e.g. Blogger, WordPress, MSN Spaces) equate the publication of the first post with the creation of the blog. A blog doesn't become a blog with the second post — the second post merely confirms (or confounds) the reader's expectation that this last essential feature will be present. A new weblog may also lack incoming or outgoing links, but restricting the definition of blog to cover only those sites which are participating in a blogosphere-level conversation would unnecessarily exclude thousands of diary weblogs.
Unlike the web forum — with which it shares many similarities — the blog is often assumed to have a limited, self-selected number of post authors. However, as new technologies allow people to contribute to the blogosphere through email or with their cell phones, this distinction becomes increasingly invalid. Some blogs, "Katrina Aftermath" for example, allow anyone to create new entries and comment on existing posts. Nevertheless, while such blogs break down the boundaries between the weblog and the web forum and create overlap between the two genres, blogs still differ from web forums in that a community of authors is still an optional rather than essential feature of the genre. With the invention of the diary weblog, blogs and online journals have a similar conceptual relationship: essential features of the latter appear as optional features in the former.
Finally, many features now considered essential are easily revealed as optional, for the simple reason that many blogs have only recently adopted them. As early weblogger Tom Coates has noted, "There are some things that become so ubiquitous and familiar to us — so seemingly obvious — that we forget that they actually had to be invented." Justin Hall began blogging in 1994, and the term "weblog" was coined on December 17, 1997, but according to Coates, permanent links to individual blog posts, now known as "permalinks," were invented years later. Likewise, Blogger users did not have built-in comment fields or titles on their posts until the summer of 2004. Many blogs still don't make use of these features, though that hasn't stopped theorists from conflating the essential with the merely typical.
Footnotes
[1] This ethos was memorably captured by early Blogger slogans like "push-button publishing for the people" and "the revolution will be bloggerized." C.f. Rak, 171. Back
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If Blood says she loves you... Saturday, April 15 11:27 PM Writing the "Blogs 101" section of my thesis, I followed the paragraph on "essential features" with one on "common misconceptions" — features often thought to be essential that really aren't.
And of course that immediately brought to mind a paragraph from Blood's "Hammer, Nail: How Blogging Software Reshaped the Online Community" which offered an example too good not to quote:
Blogger really was easy to use. When news stories began defining weblogs as "a website made with Blogger", it quickly became the most widely used blogging tool. And that changed weblogs.
An even more extreme version of this statement occurs in The Weblog Handbook:
Article after article appeared, defining a weblog as a website that was created with Blogger. If Meg or Ev ever said anything to dispel this notion, it never appeared in the published articles. (149)
Foolish new stories! But with the magic of LexisNexis, I've slogged through about 60 early (1999-2002) blog/weblog stories and I haven't found a single example of that kind of sloppy reporting.
The reporters get other stuff wrong, of course — there's some arcane point about whether "blog" comes from "web log" or "weblog," I can never remember which one it actually is — but not that. So I'm thinking: was this factoid real, satirical (because they are all in love with Blogger.com), or simply "too good to check"?
Update: Got a reply from Blood, excerpted below.
No, that's not satire, it's the way I remember it, but I don't have any references for it, either. These would be articles written in 2000 or so. I just remember becoming increasingly annoyed with articles that were infatuated with Blogger, while missing that they were part of a wider phenomenon.
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Post-meeting aside Thursday, April 13 10:32 PM So after meeting yesterday with my advisor, who gave me a lot of feedback on those first 15 pages, I've realized that — for grade-related reason — I'm going to have to write my paper for an audience more like him.
Instead of pitching it toward people who've read a bit of Blood, spend a fair bit of time in the blogosphere, and have seen any of the many blog surveys (Perseus, Herring, and the like). These kind of readers have been my audience up until now.
That means defining "blog," giving a history of the blog, and generally writing like my audience has never heard of most of the things I'm talking about. It may be somewhat painful.
Five pages for tomorrow, still working.
Update: It is pretty painful. I'm seeing some serious misreadings in my advisor's annotations (e.g. "unclear" next to most of my subtler points) — this is exactly the kind of thing writing with my audience in mind could have prevented.
Update 2: I'm supposed to focus on only one blogger at a time for the rhetoric section to avoid confusion. But as the whole point is that I'm talking about trends, I can't shake the feeling that I'm destroying evidence.
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The first 15 pages Thursday, April 6 5:01 PM Qualifications: not finished, behind in fact, my advisor hasn't read it, my group hasn't workshopped much of it. Footnotes were a bit of a pain, so I've changed any applicable ones to links and left out others. I'm especially embarassed by the last section, which notices the right things but has little to no good analysis.
In short: this is my baby, but it's an ugly baby. So constructive criticism is welcome.
Since the mid-nineties, the web genre that would eventually come to be known as the "weblog" or "blog" has become increasingly prominent.[1] Coinciding with their increased visibility, weblogs have diversified into an increasing number of subgenres; every study of the blogosphere finds that the ostensibly autobiographical, diary-style webpage — once fairly rare[2] — is by far the most common. Blogosphere studies, however, is an area with no shortage of definitional problems, and Wayne Booth's warning that "even careful critics are sometimes overpersuaded by their own definitions" (31-32) should not be taken lightly. What does Susan Herring or Rebecca Blood mean by "personal journal"? How does any given reader even understand the word "blog?" Even the most widely-accepted definition of the blog, "a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first" (Walker) contains a hidden normative aspect in its call for frequent posts. In "Distributed Narrative," Walker goes further, arguing that a blog without links or commentators is not actually a blog (20) — these definitions are unnecessarily restrictive, but they seem plausible to most readers because their normative elements are structural features present in the most popular instances of the major blog genres. Because these trait-based definitions, examples of what Anne Freadman calls the "recipe theory" of genre (52), are insufficient for building a coherent taxonomy, and because the "contrastive" approach she proposes lacks their explanatory power within genres, a non-arbitrary theorization of the diary weblog requires the separate application of two conceptually different approaches: a broad taxonomic approach based on differences in narrative structure and focus, and a rhetorical-interpretative approach identifying weblog traits correlated with success[3] within the taxonomic category. The end result is genuinely descriptive, rather than prescriptive.
Taxonomy toward a definition of the diary weblog
To locate the diary weblog genre using Freadman's contrastive approach, a "domain of pertinent comparisons" must first be chosen, a "like-statement" that precedes the successive "not-statement," which in turn establishes a dichotomy and sets up the next "like-statement" in the chain (51). Although blogs were influenced by many genres, both on- and offline — most theorists consider the diary, the homepage, and the epistolary novel relatives, and Miller goes on to spot genre features from the clipping service, the broadside, the anthology, the commonplace book, and the ship's log — rather than engage in a historical debate over weblog origins, it's simpler to begin the taxonomy within the blogosphere and make the first distinction one between two types of weblog.
In her essay, Julie Rak mentions the method of classifying weblogs by focus — sites are either focused inward, or focused outward as a set of annotated links (171). Sandeep Krishnamurthy makes a similar distinction, separating personal from topical blogs (qtd. in Herring, 3) and charting where blogs fall between the two axes. Though commentators like van Djick are right to call such distinctions "tenuous," the narratives of autobiographical weblogs, which have their source and their focus in the experiences and identity of the implied blogger, look inward to a much greater extent than weblogs like Go Fug Yourself or Said the Gramophone[4], which traffic in personal opinion but comment on aesthetic experiences which would be publicly available even if the blogger didn't exist. A similar rationale also applies to news, sports, technology, and other topical weblogs. The weblogs we're focusing on fall within the group that is content-generative, not content-dependent.
Not all content-generative weblogs, however, contain the presumptive autobiographical narrative of the diary weblog. Most of the blog Londonmark is given over to invented narratives — alternate versions of movie scenes, portentous character sketches — which, while clearly generated content, are not presented as real experiences. Other blogs, like Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal, are just as obviously fictional stories written in weblog form. Unlike the invented narratives which sometimes appear on diary weblogs, for example the statement of "quarterly objectives" Alice Bradley of Finslippy claims to have found in her toddler's crib , blogs like Londonmark posit no identification between the narrator and what, adapting a term from Wayne Booth, we'll call the "implied blogger." The contrast is not one between fictional and nonfictional blog entries, but between narratives that posit an autobiographical connection between the narrator and (to adapt a term from Wayne Booth) the "implied blogger," and narratives which don't. The presumptively reality-reflective blog entries are here the object of study.
Though Krishnamurthy provides another dichotomy — individual or community — that allows for a further demarcation of presumptively reality-reflective weblogs from a structural standpoint (qtd. in Herring 3)[5], it would be rash to construct the next dichotomy based on the number of implied bloggers. Aggregated personal sites like PostSecret and Overheard in New York, which solicit the personal experiences or observations of a number of people with entries usually selected by an editor, are unified by one or more themes. Both single and multiple-author diary weblogs, on the other hand, present the audience with one or more main "characters" to follow. On the "About" page at Dooce, Heather Armstrong notes that:
This website chronicles my life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating my husband, to when I lost my job and lived life as an unemployed drunk, to when I married my husband and moved to Utah, to when I became pregnant, to when I threw up during the pregnancy, to when I became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the aftermath, to the postpartum depression I currently suffer.
While the difference between a blog like Armstrong's and a blog like Overheard in New York is undoubtedly related to the number of contributors, the existence of multiple-author personal weblogs suggests the real contrast is between the theme-narrative genre and the character-narrative blogs, also known as diary weblogs.
While this genre taxonomy is not "whimsical" or "subjective," different classificatory statements will make different features salient (Freadman 55). This paper has relied on narrative structure and focus — whether a blog is content-generative or content-dependent, presumptively reality-reflective or unanchored fantasy, structured around a character, or a theme — to explicate the diary weblog genre, mainly because narrative structure seems to be the criterion toward which all the "recipe approach" genre formulations were pointing. Using the contrastive method, other writers might adopt different criteria and come up with their own equally valid taxonomies — it's the lack of any detailed framework in which to place blogging subgenres that leads to the chaotic, ad hoc genre categories currently in use. Even theorists mapping what they already think they've found — this taxonomy has hardly "discovered" the diary weblog, after all — will end up with less arbitrary definitions of their objects of study if they first map the blogosphere with a series of dichotomies. For the purposes of this paper, the diary weblog is any blog that generates its own content rather than commenting on other content, presents a narrative that is presumed to be reflective of the implied blogger's real experiences, and is tied together by a focus on one or more characters rather than themes.
As blogs themselves are genre hybrids, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the diary weblog genre does not appear in a vacuum; it is contained within both the genres above it in this taxonomy and other genres outside the blogosphere, it borrows from and is influenced by countless other genres, and it can appear alongside writing of another genre, in the diary entries at Londonmark, for example. The diary weblog is one of countless genre "games" (Freadman 45) available to writers online. It's this willingness to allow genres to appear as games within and alongside other genres that allows such a rigid set of dichotomies to retain its descriptive power at the taxonomic level.
The blogger — identity on the diary weblog
Though there is disagreement as to whether the blogger's contruction of identity is a form of role-playing or an authentic attempt at mimesis, and to what extent the readers care, the presentation of the online self as reflective of the implied blogger is an essential element of the diary weblog. Some theorists have adopted apparently extreme positions: Raynes-Goldie, embracing postmodernism, suggests that "in this informational chaos, the question of truth is not really a useful one," whereas McNeill notes that "though these readers do not know the diarist outside of the context of her text, they believe her textual representation is 'real,' the flesh made digital" (37). Presenting a more measured view of the subject, Kitzmann writes, "that diaries and autobiographies, both handwritten and electronic, are grounded to a significant extent on real, authentic individuals is a common enough assertion" and he compares the fictionalization of blog entries to a violation of Philippe Lejeune's "autobiographical pact" (59). From the standpoint of the reader, however, it's the assumption of truth — not actual truth — that is the essential element of the diary weblog; a fictional diary weblog may function just like an actual one if it believed to be real, though readers are often outraged to find they've been fooled.[6] This assumption of truth, however, is complicated by the limitations of the format, blogger's self-characterization, and by fictional narratives in entries.
As is the case for all forms of mediated communication, the authenticity of diary weblogs is mimetic, aware of its limitations and working within them (60). As Michelle Fowler of Mimi in New York observes, "the people here who know me by Mimi only know one side of the story, the people who know me by ---- think they know both, but they only hear what Mimi gets up to, they never witness it. It's liberating, but also confusing, deceptive, strange..." According to Rak, "it does not matter as much that bloggers cannot ever approximate face-to-face communication, or that representation cannot approximate who they 'really' are, as it matters that blog rhetoric be made to approximate what the real 'feels' like. Blog rhetoric is an instance of Jean Baudrillard's 'strategy of the real,' a rhetoric that derives its urgency from a sense that the real is lost and must be simulated" (174-175)." Nearly all readers of weblogs will be familiar with these kinds of compromises, which may seem so commonsensical that they may take the mimetic nature of the diary weblog for granted. This underscores the importance of emphasizing reader assumptions over the actual truth of a diary weblog.
As the critic Ian Watt wrote, "the accurate transcription of actuality does not necessarily produce a work of any real truth or enduring value" (32) — the truth of diary weblog entries is further complicated by bloggers' tendency to "modify what they write in direct response to their awareness of the specifics of their multiple audiences" (Sorapure 10).[7] To move beyond mere transcription, at the rhetorical level most bloggers, and the Bloggie finalists in particular, have made conscious choices about how to present their online identities. Intentional exaggeration seems to be quite common: Miller observes that "combined with its focused and repeated effort, the blog's public disclosure — its exhibitionism — yields an intensification of the self, a reflexive elaboration of identity." The pseudonymous Zinnia Cyclamen, implied blogger of Real E Fun, tends to limit her blog entries to events related to her job as a humanist funeral director — this no doubt distorts her in the eyes of the reader. Other bloggers, like Armstrong and Fowler, attempt to maintain a constant tone over multiple posts. As is also the case with popular topical blogs like Wonkette and Instapundit, readers seem to appreciate a unity of voice throughout entries, and that unity is easier to pick up on when the voice is less subtle and more entertaining. So long as it doesn't interfere with the verisimilitude of the blog for the readers, who may or may not notice any embellishment, some exaggeration of one's own identity seems to work well for the finalist weblogs.
Unlike mere exaggerations, imagined events recounted on diary weblogs are dependent on the reader's knowledge that, while the story is fake, the implied blogger is using that story to reveal something about herself[8] or some other character. Readers understand that Armstrong has not told her daughter "that little baby frogs have their legs torn off" when she doesn't say "please" — the story expresses Leta's stubbornness and Armstrong's bemused exasperation. Likewise, Bradley's account of the quarterly statement is meant to be read as a device to make her complaints about childrearing more interesting. It's a combination of reader knowledge about the implied blogger and reader assumptions about truth that prevent these examples from becoming problematic.
Either of these elements can fail, however. Many of the character sketches on Londonmark don't identify the narrator, and could easily be mistaken for actual memories or reflections, just as any tongue-in-cheek comment on a diary weblog could be taken literally by readers who lack the assumptions about the implied blogger upon which such statements are predicated. The resulting interpretation may clash with the blogger's intent, but visitors will still believe that they're reading a diary weblog entry — the result is a failure of rhetoric but not of genre. Alternately, an entry can be completely "in character" and yet readers may come to doubt its veracity. The "girl on a bicycle" hoax, in which two prominent bloggers [I'm still tracking down their names, again] started posts with the same invented story, is a good example of this latter phenomenon. The entry was unproblematic for readers who were aware that the bicycle story was invented, as well as those who never became suspicious — for those who were found out they'd been deceived, however, the post challenged their assumption that posts would either reflect reality or (even if only implicitly) signal their departure into fiction. As noted above, it's not the violation of that assumption, but rather the reader's discovery or belief that it has been violated which separates the diary weblog from various types of fictional weblog.
In the vast majority of cases, naturally, the implied blogger is based on the actual author, and though it's unwise to tie the blog too closely to any individual precursor, many theorists connect the construction of an online identity through the diary weblog to the construction of self in a diary. On the vast majority of diary weblogs which are not fictional, the writing becomes an opportunity for self-discovery; Miller notes that "bloggers, however, seem less interested in role playing than in locating, or constructing, for themselves and for others, an identity that they can understand as unitary, as 'real.'" The process of writing a blog entry — which needn't be posted until the blogger is satisfied — allows the blogger time to reflect on her experiences and present herself as she chooses; the knowledge that any posts will be public is an added incentive. In addition to their actual blogging, many diary bloggers include an "about" section, a genre that can anything from Cyclamen's short note in the sidebar to the several pages Stephanie Klein of Greek Tragedy devotes to "why I write," "favorite things," and "the real me." Regardless of its length, the "about" section is a meditation on identity, and it's often the character which emerges in "about" whom the blogger is trying to approximate in the posts.
Communication is an essential aspect of identity construction on diary weblogs. José van Dijck argues that "since its very inception, the [diary] has been dialogic rather than monologic, hence obliterating the line between private and public," but even if our notion of the diary as historically private is a misconception, for many bloggers the diary weblog opens up new possibilities for communication. The diary's practice of "addressing," which van Dijck considers "crucial to the recognition of diary writing as an act of communication" — is no longer limited to an imagined addressee. As McNeill puts it, "online participation in this genre allows writers to carry on diary conversations that will no longer be monologic, where the response will not be just imagined but actual" (28). Often diary blogs will provide an email address or post-specific comment field for user input; barring that, the blogger still has the sense that an audience of confessors is reading her work. So Fowler tells her readers in the initial post that "I want you to help me make the decisions about how to achieve [my] goals. Every aspect of my life will be up for discussion on this website. I want you to post your replies and your advice, criticism, encouragement, to me here." Even if the blogger rejects user input, she's still relating her experiences before an audience, in a public communication. The most successful diarist bloggers tend to use a certain set of strategies to make this communication effective.
Rhetorical elements of the diary weblog
Though the "recipe approach" to genre is unsuitable for taxonomies, within a pre-established genre, a catalogue of traits can show how writers are innovating the form, and point to practices that may eventually form the basis for differentiable subgenres. Rather than attempt to provide an exhaustive list of the rhetorical elements on the chosen diary weblogs —is it that important that these bloggers overwhelming prefer sans-serif fonts? — this section will sketch out common, especially salient rhetorical elements related to the narrative of a diary weblog. Listing these elements may provide readers with an approximate description of what constitutes good writing within the genre in the opinion of the many readers who nominated these blogs for "best writing" awards, but this paper makes no prescriptive claim as to the value of any trait described. The rhetorical elements of the weblogs that fall into the diary weblog taxonomy vary widely, but the most successful weblogs make frequent use of unified posts, a dynamic narrator, static secondary characters, ironic distance, dialogue, [and much, much more...]
Post unity, through a focus on a single theme or event, is a common feature of all the "best writing" nominees. It's by no means universal — these bloggers occasionally engage in rambling posts just like the rest of the blogosphere — but generally readers can expect a single topic, usually indicated in the post's title. Julia Montgomery of Tequila Mockingbird devotes a number of posts to anecdotes, like the wrong number conversation in "alas, poor norm. i knew him not." Bradley and Armstrong both devote posts to when they gave birth, and tell day-to-day stories about raising their children. Fowler writes about her nights at the strip club, or reproduces conversations she's had. Posts on a single topic or theme, like Klein's "your theme song" or Cyclamen's "Don't Tell The Children" are also very common. Such entries go beyond what McNeill calls "the diary's traditionally personal functions of logbook and memoranda" — an approach to the diary that is common, perhaps even predominant, on diary weblogs elsewhere in the blogosphere, where bloggers often simply list the events of their day. The unified posts still serve as records, but their unity acknowledges a desire to entertain others. As almost all blog entries make use of "permalinks," post unity is also a way of acknowledging, and encouraging, the practice of linking online — at the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, the most-linked posts from dooce.com are all unified by a single event or theme.
As mentioned above, process of writing a diary weblog is also a process of identity construction, composing and refining the implied blogger as the narrative progresses. This affects not only the character behind the writing, but also the character in the telling; the narrator too is often dynamic. In fact, although in Bradley and Armstrong's case their growing children (and Armstrong's dog Chuck) are also fully realized, dynamic characters, it's usually only the narrator who changes in any way through the entries. Sometimes this change is presented in the form of an explicit revelation, and when Fowler, an English expatriate, writes that "An arse is an ass, and I am well on the way to becoming a New York female," or Klein relates that "I was writing a story about my summers at camp, when suddenly the character on my page was an ex, and I realized I wanted to know about him now... realized I really always liked him for him, just as he is." It can also be more subtle, however. In September of 2004, Cyclamen devoted several posts to her thought processes as she prepared to officiate at a funeral against the wishes of Viv, the deceased's wife. Devoted readers can also track the changes in "Mimi" — looking back at her own posts, Fowler observes that "I lost my sense of humor somewhere around May."
In contrast to the dynamic narrator of these diary weblogs, the many static, two-dimensional characters provide stability. Armstrong's husband Jon, though a major figure on her weblog, is nonetheless static, a supportive constant in the narrative. Likewise, every mention of Armstrong's mother alludes to the relentless nature that has made her the "Avon World Sales Leader." Other characters are even more recognizably two-dimensional sketches. Cyclamen's husband is referred to only as Top Bloke, a pseudonym that also constitutes the bulk of his characterization. Fowler makes frequent use of pseudonyms — "The Diplomat," "English friend," etc. — and Montgomery, like many "best writing" bloggers, tends to use role-based designations like "my sister" and "my mother" in lieu of actual names. The diary blogger is generally more concerned with sharing her own thoughts and experiences than with tracking the personal growth of others, and by limiting evidence of personal growth to one narrator character (with rare exceptions), the blogger controls the focus of the story and can demand the attention of the audience. The real story is about the narrator (or one or two others); others are merely characters in that story.
Though the stereotypical diary weblog is self-absorbed and melodramatic, these bloggers craft their entries with a considerable amount of ironic distance, which presents itself in several ways. The "best writing" nominees often comment on their own actions, as when Londonmark follows an embarrassing anecdote with the observation that "I shouldn't be allowed out, it's true. I'm not ready for civilised society" or Cyclamen relates a moment of doubt in the third person: "I hope to goodness I do, thought Zinnia." The decision to undercut potentially melodramatic statements is another manifestation of ironic distance: Bradley blogs about how good it is "to finally, after years of struggling with rock-bottom expectations and crippling self-doubt and blar de blar twelve years of therapy blar, be doing what I've always want ed to do." Armstrong blogs that her first 13 weeks of pregnancy were far worse, but immediately adds "but this doesn't mean that I'm not going to go ahead and complain about this last trimester." Many of these bloggers also use irony to combat the temptation to take their own blogging — and their popularity within the blogosphere — too seriously. Montgomery ran a post before the 2005 Bloggies titled "i promise to use my blog to promote bathroom humor...and world peace." And though her blog is by many measures the most popular diary weblog, Armstrong frequently exaggerates the importance of the Internet to make her status seem slightly ridiculous — "I never knew that the binky was such a political issue, and when we took away Leta's pacifier earlier this week we apparently took away the Internet's pacifier, and the Internet is PISSED."
Dialogue is also an important element on these weblogs. Most of Montgomery's Tequila Mockingbird entries, for example the "alas, poor norm. i knew him not" conversation mentioned above, contain long stretches of dialogue (it's only the reader's awareness of the autobiographical pact that prevents these posts from straining credulity), and the other bloggers transcribe conversations of varying length. Armstrong relates conversations with her husband, like their argument over her missing keys, and Bradley often posts conversations she's had with her son Henry. Dialogue is usually included for comedic or (on Fowler's blog, for example) satirical purposes, though it needn't be — Cyclamen uses transcribed conversations to tell the story of Viv's husband's funeral, and her apprehensions about officiating.
And that's where it stops, at the moment.
[1] As of November 2004, more than 8 million Americans had created weblogs, and twenty-seven percent of American Internet users, roughly 32 million people, claimed to be blog readers. (Rainie) Back
[2] In "The Digital Queer: Weblogs and Internet Identity," Julie Rak makes a convincing argument that the diary weblog of today is descended from the link-based weblogs of the past more so than the online journals which pre-date blogging (171). Blood discusses the transition from link-log to the more personal blog in "Weblogs: A History and Perspective." Back
[3] For the purposes of this essay, the seven autobiographical "best writing of a weblog" Weblog Awards finalists for 2005 (Dooce, Tequila Mockingbird, Londonmark, Greek Tragedy, and Real E Fun) and 2006 (Dooce, Finslippy, and Mimi in NY) — are taken as representatives of the rhetorically "successful" diary weblog. As a criterion, a democratic contest is superior to hits or incoming links (though these blogs have plenty of both) because of the element of informed approval inherent in the nomination process. Though the existence of other contests like the Diarist Awards (diarist.net) would seem to problematize this choice, the Weblog Awards or "Bloggies" represent a larger, more diverse cross-section of blog readers. As several of these blogs have changed their format considerably over the years, any analysis only applies to the year preceding their nomination. Back
[4] The two "best writing" finalists that most clearly fall outside the diary weblog genre. A critique of celebrity fashion and a music site, respectively. Back
[5] There are other narrative aspects of weblogs that could be used to theorize a taxonomy, perhaps even before taking the aforementioned categories into account. Many readers would still recognize a website as a blog if it lacked the traditional reverse-temporal ordering scheme, or if it was a proto-blog with only one post. Yet these two entities are fundamentally different in structure from the typical blog. Back
[6] Notable diary weblog hoaxes include QT's Diary, Plain Layne, and Kaycee Nicole's "Living Colors." Back
[7] Though theorists like Walker and McNeill overgeneralize when they imply that most diarists want to make that audience as large and active as possible. Back
[8] Throughout this essay, I've used feminine pronouns to describe bloggers. This choice has less to do with gender politics than the recognition that most bloggers, most web diarists, and all the "best-writing" diarists except Londonmark are female. Outside of the diary weblog genre, however, the most popular bloggers tend to be male. Back
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Prelude to progress? Monday, April 3 4:28 PM Working on the first 20 pages of my thesis. Which, yes Virginia, you will get to see either tomorrow or late tonight.
I wish I hadn't learned all that stuff about "characters" and "actions" last week, though. Because I'm haphazardly rewriting every sentence now.
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