Orality in Lifestyle Blogs Written by L1 and L2 Speakers of English: Four Case Studies

Abstract

The present study explores the differences in Norwegian and English blog writers’ use of rhetorical strategies in an informal writing style. The focus is on four lifestyle blogs, two which are written by speakers with English as their first language and two by speakers with English as their second language. The study addresses four features traditionally connected with oral communication: greetings and partings, intensifiers, interjections, and direct address. The study enquires into the frequency and types of oral features used in the blogs, as well as the role native language has in the choice and use of these features. The corpus collected for the study consists of 50 randomly selected blogposts from each of the four blogs.