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<Paper uid="W06-2803">
  <Title>Linguistic features of Italian blogs: literary language</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="11" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Close scrutiny of e-mails has revealed the pres ence of many different kinds of style in this medium (Baron 2000: 250-2; Pistolesi 2003: 178-184 for Italian). The same appears to be true for blogs. It is therefore difficult to determine specific linguistic features of blogs. Even occa sional surveys however show that blogs are not limited to &amp;quot;a language reminiscent of brief notes, spoken asides, or short letters, rather than of es says or newsprint&amp;quot;. Such language plays an im portant role in blogs, but accounts for only a small part of them. Many individual blogs aim instead at a true &amp;quot;literary&amp;quot; status and have a cor respondingly high standard for word selection.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Therefore, the linguistic equilibrium of this medium could be higher than expected. The pa per will try to describe the general linguistic fea tures of Italian blogs by contrasting them mainly with the language of newspapers, giving appro priate quantitative data.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> 2 Preliminary qualitative analysis: a tex tual sample As a reference sample of blogs we can take ten blogs hosted by the Italian blog publishing site Splinder.com (arguably the most popular site of its kind). The sample was chosen by selecting the most recent blog appearing in the site list of the &amp;quot;Ultimi blog aggiornati&amp;quot; ('Most recently updated blogs'), and by selecting the first page of the postings published by the blog itself in Novem ber 2005 (if it had at least two postings in November). The selection was made at different times on one given day (29 December 2005) Some features of the selected blogs are described in Table 1.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> A post taken from one of the less formal blogs in the sample (di ritorno da...) shows many of the linguistic features commonly ascribed to this kind of writing: giornata piu tranquilla..sara che sono a casa mia..a fare la mia vita..parlo appunto di mia perche la vita parallela che sto facendo a milano non mi appartiene..quindi non posso dire che sia mia..che di scorso complesso pero ci stava dentro bene nel conte sto..</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> ho programmato il mio capodanno..dopo due anni consecutivi in una baita in montagna quest'anno lascio l'italia..pronta per 4 gg in scozia con tre amiche.. non vedo l'ora..partiro il 30 di dicembre..aspetto quel giorno e intanto mi preparo per quattro esami al l'universita..</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> ah...il viaggio al prezzo di 45 euro di volo e 90 di ostello..ultra risparmio...</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> The text describes the planning of a holday trip in Scotland for New Year's Eve and personal feeliings.The post shows also many unprofes sional graphic choices (no capital letters for proper nouns or at the beginning of a sentence, no spacing after punctuation marks, perche in stead of perche) and the frequent use of three (or,  wrongly, two) suspension points. The latter fea ture, also illustrated in Table 1, is considered one of the most common features of blogs and in this case it is surely used to give a feeling of &amp;quot;spoken language&amp;quot; to the text.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> The language of the other blogs in the sample is, instead, very different. Suspension points are used in the blog SoleLuna in order to create highpitched literary texts. This is a kind of lyrical de scription of a problematic relationship: Cancelli i tuoi passi nell'ombra di te stesso e scom pari e compari quando e come piu ti aggrada... Ed io mi lascio prendere dai pensieri e mi lascio intorpidire dai ricordi... Mi rivesto di te.. di noi.. Ho freddo.. Cer co di scaldarmi con il ricordo di un amore... Non ti amo. Amo il ricordo di quello che eravamo... E mi sfuggono via dalla mente le sensazioni e scivolano via gli odori.. si sbiadiscono i sapori... Tutto diventa la sfumatura del proprio colore.. la parodia, la beffa... Cerco di palpare le immagini e faccio attenzione a non sgualcirle.. piu di quanto non lo sia io...</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> This kind of lyric language is heavily based upon the use of literary forms (&amp;quot;ti aggrada&amp;quot;), complex rhetorical constructions, &amp;quot;-d eufonica&amp;quot; and so on.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Midway between these two extremes we can find blogs like Incontrista. The posts of this blog are written in a language echoing newspaper edi torials and brilliant prose. Significantly, they make no use of suspension points, as in this sec tione (where the author contrasts the average psychological differences between female blog gers and female subscribers of dating sites): E' quindi un fatto ancora che le splinderine sono mediamente delle ragazze migliori delle meetiche proprio per questo motivo. Hanno capacita, caratteri stiche e aspetti che a me piacciono, come la voglia di esprimersi, di raccontare, di scrivere, di comunicare, di leggere, di scegliere, di assumere posizioni critiche. Le splinderine fanno parte della fascia piu esperta e innovativa degli utenti internet, quelli che ne fanno un utilizzo piu consapevole, e che hanno una cultura piu elevata della media. Le splinderine sono donne che hanno qualcosa da dire e vogliono compagni di alto li vello con cui cercano il confronto serrato e accettano anche lo scontro.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> It seems that none of those kinds of language could today claim to be the main model for blog writing. Free expression, literary prose and news paper writing seem to co-exist without a clear dominant position. Of course, however, those impressions can be given substance only through extension of the field of search to a large set of blogs. This is partly made possible by the use of modern search engines.</Paragraph>
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