The language of Weblogs : a study of genre and individual differences
This thesis describes a linguistic investigation of individual differences in online personal diaries, or 'blogs.' There is substantial evidence of gender differences in language (Lakoff, 1975), and to a lesser extent linguistic projection of personality (Pennebaker & King, 1999). Recent work has investigated these latter differences in the area of computer-mediated communication (CMC), specifically e-mail (Gill, 2004). This thesis employs a number of analytic techniques, both top-down (dictionary-based) and bottom-up (data-driven), in order to explore personality and gender differences in the language of blogs. A corpus was constructed by asking authors to submit a month of text and complete a sociobiographic questionnaire. The corpus consists of over 400,000 words and five-factor personality data (Buchanan, 2001) for 71 subjects. The thesis begins by framing blogs in the context of other genres, both CMC and traditional, in order to show both the distinctiveness and representativeness of the genre. Top-down content analysis techniques are then employed to investigate the relationship between personality and linguistic features. A number of features correlate with each trait, but upon regression, very little
Nowson, Scott
Personality ; Language ; Gender ; Weblogs
The language of Weblogs : a study of genre and individual differences. This thesis describes a linguistic investigation of individual differences in online personal diaries, or 'blogs.' There is substantial evidence of gender differences in language (Lakoff, 1975), and to a lesser extent linguistic projection of personality (Pennebaker & King, 1999). Recent work has investigated these latter differences in the area of computer-mediated communication (CMC), specifically e-mail (Gill, 2004). This thesis employs a number of analytic techniques, both top-down (dictionary-based) and bottom-up (data-driven), in order to explore personality and gender differences in the language of blogs. A corpus was constructed by asking authors to submit a month of text and complete a sociobiographic questionnaire. The corpus consists of over 400,000 words and five-factor personality data (Buchanan, 2001) for 71 subjects. The thesis begins by framing blogs in the context of other genres, both CMC and traditional, in order to show both the distinctiveness and representativeness of the genre. Top-down content analysis techniques are then employed to investigate the relationship between personality and linguistic features. A number of features correlate with each trait, but upon regression, very little
language study genre individual_difference describes linguistic investigation individual_difference online personal diary substantial_evidence gender_difference language lakoff less_extent linguistic projection personality and king recent_work investigate latter difference area computer_mediated communication cmc specifically mail employ number analytic technique top_down dictionary based bottom_up data_driven order_explore personality gender_difference language corpus_construct ask author submit month text complete questionnaire corpus_consist word factor personality data subject begin frame context genre cmc traditional order_show distinctiveness representativeness genre top_down content analysis technique_employ investigate_relationship personality linguistic_feature number feature correlate trait upon regression little