RITA MILIŪNAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

A FIRST LOOK AT THE LANGUAGE OF BLOGS

I. A NEW FORM OF LANGUAGE IN THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT

The well-known saying by Bill Gates, founder of the software corporation Microsoft, “If language is not on the Internet, it will not exist at all,” was gradually rephrased: soon it was applied to companies and institutions, and now even to individuals. Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone who is even somewhat socially active about whom there is not at least some information on the Internet. What is more, the Internet is penetrating everyday life so deeply that now anyone who wishes can create their own “corner” there.

1. The Beginning of the Blog Era

A little over a decade ago, so-called blogs—public online diaries that anyone who wishes can write—began to appear on the World Wide Web. There is no complete agreement about their origins, but 1994 is most often cited, when one U.S. Internet user began posting daily updates online: recounting films he had seen, books he had read—in other words, keeping a kind of diary. Blogs are now counted in the millions, and it is said that their number doubles every six months. Around 2000, such diaries also began to appear in the Lithuanian-language Internet environment. Around 2004—the same year that the dictionary publishers Merriam-Webster in the United States named the word blog (“tinklaraštis”) Word of the Year—Lithuanian blogs began to proliferate rapidly, and in 2006–2007 there was a boom in creating them in Lithuanian. For example, seven authors who started blogging on one website in 2007 reported the following statistics about a year later:

The site has: posts – 4123, comments – 18370, total words – 812101. That’s already twelve books of 300 pages each. We’re writing the thirteenth volume. (www.nezinau.lt, accessed 2008 05 09)

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David Crystal, best known to us as the author of the recently published Lithuanian translation of „Kalbos mirtis“¹, devotes nine pages in another of his books, „Kalba ir internetas“, in its second edition, to blogs (essentially, to describing their various manifestations) (Crystal 2006: 238–247). He admits that when he published the first edition of this book in 2001, he expected changes to emerge on the internet later, since some of them had already begun to appear, though they had not yet attracted much public attention. However, Crystal did not anticipate that five years later an entire chapter of the book would be needed for entirely new forms of the internet. One of these forms is blogs, spreading rapidly across the internet, whose language differs so much from that of other internet forms that it must be examined separately.

So what are blogs, and what is distinctive about their language? To answer this question, we must discuss the characteristics of blogs themselves in greater detail, since only then will it be possible to understand their role in society’s communication and, at the same time, begin to raise a question for further consideration: what is the significance of blog language and its potential impact on the development of the Lithuanian language as a whole?

2. The blogosphere – the next-generation internet (Web 2.0)

The emergence and flourishing of blogs are linked to a qualitative leap in the internet as a global computer network. Around 2004, the term Web 2.0 was proposed to refer to next-generation internet services and technologies. The Lithuanian media wrote about it:

Web 2.0 is driven by data. The web is presented as a platform on which new services can be built. A network effect results (network effect): the more people use a particular service, the greater the benefit to all participants in the process. (Vedrickas 2007)

These new information technologies make it easy to create and manage desired information online, even without specialized programming skills—more simply and conveniently than with personal websites. This capability was put to use in creating blogs. A blog is a public web page that can be managed and updated at any time according to the author’s wishes, and on which various personal information is most often posted: accounts of one’s activities, interests, and travel experiences; opinions on various issues; and shared information

¹ David Crystal. Kalbos mirtis, Vilnius: Tyto alba, 2005.

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(for example, about a newly purchased household appliance, online exchanges of goods, or various community campaigns), as well as one’s own creative work, photographs, video and audio recordings, and so on. One comment on this reads:

The reasons for keeping a blog can vary: the need to share thoughts and knowledge with other people, to release and dispel pent-up negative emotions, to satisfy one’s ego, to express one’s individuality, or the need for creative expression—to write poems, short stories, and the like. (Klaustux)²

Because posts are automatically dated and displayed with the newest first, the webpage comes to resemble a kind of diary. Each post has a title. Authors try to come up with one that will immediately catch the reader’s attention and stand out among other authors’ posts in lists of recent entries, for example:

• About Monday and “cat” claws

• yes, yes... during lessons

• Why do doctors write prescriptions by hand?

In addition to the regular posts published in the center of the page, grouped by topic and collected in an archive, the edges of a blog are full of various links to other blogs (usually those of friends and like-minded people) and favorite websites. It is customary for each post to have a comments section where blog readers can express their opinions; the blog’s margins may also display a complete list of visitors’ comments. Here is what a text looks like that reviews blogs the author enjoyed reading, with hyperlinks underlined—one can click through to those blogs straight away:

Well, how nice that today is only Mother’s Day (and also Ascension Day and St. Florian’s Day, but that’s beside the point), because yesterday’s conglomeration was not a success. Still, the outcome was positive: most people got out to take a walk in nature, for the first time to take their computer for a walk around the yard, to enjoy live music, to eat pizza at a new place, or simply to admire the work of the young mom’s helpers. (vienastoks)

The authors decide for themselves whether to remain completely anonymous—using only a pseudonym—or to provide information about themselves (first and last name, date of birth, place of residence—usually specifying the city—and so on).

² Since there is as yet no established tradition for citing blogs in our printed literature (online, this is done through the corresponding hyperlinks), this time the citations give a pseudonym or a name—as the author signs their work. The graphic presentation and language of the quoted texts have, of course, been left uncorrected, so that the authentic picture can be seen.

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Websites that perform a certain function of aggregating and hosting blogs usually provide lists of the latest and most-read posts. In this way, entire online communities³ are formed, and within them, groups of bloggers with shared interests. Users can subscribe to updates from blogs of their choice; reviews of the best posts are written, directories of bloggers are compiled—in short, an entirely new virtual space is taking shape.

In addition to personal blogs, news portals and various institutions—television and radio companies, for example—have begun creating websites of this genre on their own sites (e.g., delfi.lt, alfa.lt, mtv.lt, etc.). This is done mainly for advertising purposes, to foster an image of more accessible, direct communication, since institutional blogs are written by the institutions’ own employees (usually under their real names). Professional media workers sometimes make use of this genre and its popularity to serve their immediate professional aims. Distinct varieties of blogs are crystallizing across the World Wide Web as a promising Internet genre (for more, see the continuation of this article—Miliūnaitė 2008).

An important feature of blogs is that they do not function independently, each in isolation, but are connected in various ways (through hyperlinks, addresses of like-minded people, etc.) to other blogs, so information is constantly being disseminated and exchanged. For now, in the absence of a more established Lithuanian equivalent, this entire body of blogs on the Internet (tinklaraštyno? someone’s coinage, tinklaraštijos?) is most often called the blogosphere.

3. Blog Authors and Their Aims

Among various personal details, bloggers give a pseudonym, though some also provide their real first and last names. Even if we set aside misleading information, which for various reasons is always found, it would not be inaccurate to say that the youngest bloggers are in early adolescence—approximately 12–13 years old, when they have acquired some computer skills, since a blog must be set up and maintained by its owner using certain tools offered by websites.

Thus, the degree of anonymity varies considerably, but is far lower than in Internet-based electronic discourse (discussion forums and comments)⁴,

³ The characteristics of these online communities, which form social networks, are studied by a new branch of anthropology—digital ethnography.

⁴ The term discourse has several meanings: 1) any text considered in relation to the context in which it is created and functions; 2) a particular domain of language (e.g., scientific, political discourse); 3) interactiv-

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where signing only with a pseudonym is the norm in online communication. The anonymity level of blog authors is largely determined by their audience: if they are primarily friends, then certain markers of personal identity are needed. Only detailed research could show how much a reduction in anonymity or the author’s complete public visibility affects language use. For now, after examining a small collection of blogs of varying quality written by authors of different ages, one can assume that the language of authors who write under their real identities is more orderly, since they feel a greater responsibility for their words in public. They understand that they are entering the public sphere, though one that is somewhat different and demands more responsibility than anonymous electronic discourse. Leonidas Donskis writes about the language of anonymous online comments:

Do we really not reflect on the effects that barbaric language has on fifteen-year-olds when national minorities or the country’s most prominent people are discussed in anonymous comments? After all, we have erased the boundary between public and private speech—what no one should hear when people joke privately is increasingly becoming our official political discourse today and helping people achieve fame and popularity. Is it really not clear that we are already on the way to legitimizing tavern language in public life and politics? (Donskis 2008)

That “tavern language” is, in fact, rare in blogs. Blog authors themselves say that “a good name and prestige are very important to a blogger,” because the speed and reach with which their ideas spread, and whether they elicit any response, depend on it. Here is one author’s reflection in the comments on a blogger’s reputation:

When I wrote that post about viskisielius, I thought for a long time that perhaps I shouldn’t have done it. And I don’t write a whole lot of posts precisely because I don’t want to stand out too much in public—that is, essentially, in an official setting, since it is unclear whether it is formal or not—so we choose the worse/safer option.

Even the blogs I write anonymously are not written without regard for reputation. In online communities, “reputation” is even more important than in real life, because in reality you never meet as many people as you meet online, unless you’re someone like Zvonkė⁵. (Dominykas)

vus, diskusinis bendravimas (plg. Marcinkevičienė 2008: 15–16). Šiame straipsnyje elektroniniu diskursu vadinama ne elektroninės terpės tekstų visuma, o tik tie tekstai, kurie atlieka tiesioginio (interaktyvaus) bendravimo funkciją. Paprastai tai esti nedidelės apimties žinutės, kai bendraujama realiuoju laiku arba per laiko tarpą. Jos gali būti rašomos kompiuteriu arba mobiliuoju telefonu: interneto komentarai, žinutės diskusijų forumuose, elektroniniai laiškai, telefono žinutės, sparčiosios (arba momentinės) žinutės (pavyzdžiui, naudojant „Skype“ programą) ir pan.

⁵Surname of a well-known figure in the entertainment world.

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What are blog authors aiming for, and what motivates them to write? For some, it is a passing fad, a psychologically understandable desire to leave a mark—“I was here.” For others, it is their first more serious attempt at public self-expression, since, as noted, electronic discourse cannot take its place. In a survey of colleagues conducted by one author, several answers to the question of what a blog is were quite apt:

A place where you make public half of what you chatter about. Your virtual form of expression.

For young people, blogs are first and foremost a means of socialization—looking for friends and like-minded people, and thus an attempt to identify with their peers (Huffaker, Calvert 2005). The role of language is also important here, since the language young people use has specific features.

Some authors’ texts really do resemble the diary genre: they are written for oneself, with the only difference being that everyone can read them. Sometimes they are like a notebook that a person can look up online whenever it suits them. In entries of this genre, it is quite popular to add a “note to oneself” (English: note to (my) self), thus setting apart the part of the text that is in fact important only to the author:

Everything is in our heads, everything is in our attitude—mine too! (Note to myself. This expression sounds better in English, so please don’t be offended.) (Serafimas)

Or a Lithuanian woman studying abroad writes:

And this question would thus remain unanswered, pointing to some aimless motivation toward who-knows-what, but the brochure of the Strasbourg School of Management, stuck right in front of my eyes, very quickly explains the purpose of all this. (Note to self—LEARN FRENCH). (Viktorija)

Thus, the age of bloggers has a considerable influence on the content of the texts they publish, which also depends on the authors’ interests, education, occupation, and similar factors.

4. Blog Content

Because the content of blogs is not controlled by anyone and is left to the author’s responsibility (when starting a new blog, their websites introduce general rules and warn users about personal responsibility), many find this way of publicly expressing their opinions and looking for like-minded people—

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—very appealing. For this very reason, in civically active societies, such as the USA, blogs were first used to express political views, especially regarding the fight against terrorism, as well as to respond to various social events, share social experiences, and so on. Blogs are therefore often considered a kind of citizen journalism genre.

In Lithuania, professional media practitioners’ opinions about the role of blogs in our society are highly contradictory: from the claim that Web 2.0 fosters a culture of dilettantes (Virginijus Savukynas), to the view of blogs as gravediggers of professional media (Virginijus Valentinavičius)⁶. According to specialists, in Lithuania there is a much stronger inclination toward personal blog content, and blogs are apolitical. At the same time, there is also a fear that these electronic diaries are becoming competitors to professional journalism. According to Aurelijus Katkevičius, blogs best show what interests society: if a topic is widely discussed online, it is almost certain to be covered in a newspaper the next day. Nevertheless, the electronic environment and the latest technologies allow people not only to express their opinions on matters of concern, but also to involve other interlocutors in a virtual conversation:

[...] what matters more in the blogosphere is not an in-depth examination of a topic, but an invitation to discussion. The community’s role is more important here, since one of its most important tasks is to provoke discussion. (Šarūnas Girdėnas)

One blogger describes the relationship between blogs and professional media as follows:

[...] traditional media definitely has to change and find its place on the new map. However, in one form or another, it will always remain.

A blogger will never be a professional journalist. And that is good, because everyone has to do their own job. A professional journalist will gather and verify information every day, whereas a blogger will do so only when there is time, if blogging is not their main occupation. [...] That is why I am very skeptical of the ideas voiced in the blogosphere that blogs (bloggers) are/will be better than the media (journalists). I think this should be viewed somewhat differently: these are different activities, with different processes and often different aims. The media and blogs are not substitutes, but complements, and in the future these two channels will coexist symbiotically. (gedzius29)

The positions and responsibilities of professional media practitioners and bloggers differ. According to one blog author, a journalist submits an article for publi-

⁶ These opinions come from talks delivered at the second bloggers’ conference on April 5, 2008. Bloggers themselves quote and discuss them extensively (for example, the conference review is available online at: http://www.ore.lt/article.php?action=get&id=1007845).

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to the doctor, “the blogger speaks directly to the reader. A journalist can rely on the backing of an editorial office, [...] the blogger [...] goes straight to the front line” (vienastoks).

Thus, there are countless forms of blogs and possibilities for creating them; the variety of authors and content is immense, and this makes this web genre difficult to describe, unpredictable, and elusive. It seems that everyone who can be bothered writes blogs. And who reads them? David Crystal answers this question wittily: it seems, unfortunately, that the vast majority of them are read by no one, except by a linguist who happens to wander through the blogosphere (Crystal 2006: 246). In fact, the best-known and most popular blogs have many readers—by some estimates, more than newspapers do. All the rest of this “written-up” space, however, often remains without an echo.

In any case, bloggers themselves believe that this innovation in the online world is “an exceptionally good way for people to disseminate their own ideas and creative work, hold discussions, and find like-minded people” (vienastoks).

5. The terminology problem

The English word blog was first used in 1997. It is a word formed in an atypical way. First, the phrase web log came into use, followed by the compound weblog (a word-for-word rendering in Lithuanian would be “web + diary⁷”). One internet user with a sense of humor “etymologized” weblog as a combination of the English personal pronoun we (“we”) and the supposed verb blog (“we blog,” i.e. “we write a blog”), thus isolating the morphologically nonexistent element blog. Later, many derivatives of the neologism blog began to appear, naming various things related to blogs: their authors themselves (blogger), the activity (blogging), the collective online blog sphere (blogosphere), blog posts sent by mobile phones (moblog), and blogs containing video, audio recordings, or photographs (videoblog (vlog), audioblog, photoblog), and so on. One of the newest types of blogs, called klog (from knowledge log) in English, has not yet been encountered in the Lithuanian part of the internet. These blogs are created mainly by organizations and institutions for business purposes (sharing experience) and educational aims.

⁷ One of the meanings given for the English word log (short for logbook) is “(a ship’s or aircraft’s) log” (ALKONAS), but in Lithuanian it may also be rendered by the word dienynas (cf. DŽ₆: “a book of an institution’s or person’s records, filled in daily or with dates otherwise noted; a journal”).

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In unregulated internet usage, the foreign word blogas, although it accidentally became a homograph of the Lithuanian adjective blogas, began to spread rapidly with the first Lithuanian blogs. This homonymy is often exploited as a play on words:

Rogoznyj concluded [...] with the slogan: “there’s no good that wouldn’t come out into the BLOG.” So, from now on, the “blogging” of life means not what those born Lithuanian are used to complaining about, but quite the opposite—more freedom and, accordingly, more joy. (Virgis Valentinavičius)

Here is another blog post (underlined passages indicate the blog’s hyperlinks):

Not bad, but good and beautiful

Actually, I’d read Aušra’s blog about her trip to the mountains, then Ieva’s blog about piranhas, and decided to write a good one. About the theater. Or, more precisely, the circus. Or, to be even more precise, I decided not to write much, but to show it better. Something good and beautiful. Girls look at life in far too complicated a way. For them, everything is always bad. But sometimes things are good for me, too. That’s why I write about it. Especially since our IT chief Antanas keeps demanding “good news.” (Andrius Vaitkevičius)

The most commonly used loanword is, of course, blogas (with various spelling variants: blog’as, BLOGas). Less often, people use diary, electronic or online diary; very rarely, kaupas; and probably the most common of all the Lithuanian alternatives, and the one aspiring to become the official standard-language term, is tinklaraštis. The proposal to replace blogus with electronic diaries was discussed by their authors at their first conference in 2007, and Virginijus Valentinavičius, who attended the conference, commented on this terminology issue as follows on his blog:

The news that the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language had banned the word “blogas” and proposed using what it considered the more correct “internet diary” drew plenty of ridicule—convenient and elegant, rather like combat boots on a blonde (once again the Commission’s hand: the automatic spellcheck has just corrected a word my grandfather used, “kerzavi”). Why doesn’t the respected State Commission of the Lithuanian Language want to ban the word “commission”? It’s not Lithuanian, and it’s clearly far too short and convenient.

Besides, how far can language regulation on the internet go? Will we have to hire linguists to edit article comments? Will our glorious state organize a virtual police squad to search for and punish internet users who write, speak, and think incorrectly? And once it’s done with the internet, can it move on to the language used in telephone conversations?

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In general usage, including in the blogs themselves, the names vary; often even the same author (in this case, a thirteen-year-old) uses them as synonyms:

The idea of starting a blog came to me a long time ago, but I kept putting off deciding what to write in it, and so I never got started. But after I read a few blogs, I realized that writing a blog wasn’t as hard as I’d thought. So now I have my own personal blog. It won’t focus on a single topic. Just a little bit of everything.

But will I actually be able to create an interesting blog that captures people’s attention? This question still won’t leave me in peace. I think that with help from other bloggers, I’ll manage to get something out of this new blog. So anyone who doesn’t mind and isn’t afraid to share their experience, feel free to tell me everything. (Mykolas)

The word blog brought along the English-derived forms mentioned earlier, but new forms of our own have also been coined. Here are some words with the borrowed root blog- and words with the prefix element blog-, as well as words with the second element -log, found in Lithuanian blogs⁸ and in information and discussions about them (an example of usage is also provided alongside⁹):

blogarašliavinis, -ė: Blogs are not only a social phenomenon, not only a business; they can also be a kind of addiction, a kind of disease whose virus spreads over the internet and infects not only those who write, but also those who read. Dovilė, do you suffer from blogarašliavine disease?

blogas: [...] blogas is a chance to become a publisher in ten minutes, and anyone who wants to can do it.

blogdepresija: Installing visitor statistics tracking tools is the first step toward a blog’s degeneration, ultimately leading only to blogdepresiją.

blogeris, -ė: [...] blogeriai tend to be the first to try new things and spread the word about them.

blogferma: Blogas.lt is the largest and best-known Lithuanian “blogferma“.

bloginti: [...] I came up with the idea of pablog’int about the answers to this question.

bloginimas: The optimal bloginimo frequency is one post a day. That’s more convenient for the reader, so it’s a good idea to have a few posts ready for the future—if not fully written, then at least with their topics or main ideas worked out.

blogybė: 539 blogybė [post title].

blog-klausimas: One conclusion is clear: I still have a lot of educating to do among the people around me about blog-klausimais;)

bloglogas, blogologas: at last Aurelijus came to his senses and made/remade his blogologą [a blog-ranking system].

blog-neišprusęs, -usi: The answers given by people around me, recorded in the survey. Unfortunately, the vast majority turned out to be completely blog-neišprusę;)

⁸ The addresses of Lithuanian blog websites whose information is used in the article are listed in the bibliography. The data were recorded from April to June 2008.

⁹In these online examples, only quotation marks and dashes have been corrected.

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blogomania: Blogomania is more of a social phenomenon than a business.

blogopersona: It was the first time I saw Liutauras in person [...] and a few other universally recognized and respected blogopersonas.

blogorama: [...] I no longer pay attention to the main principle for selecting the posts discussed in blogoramas—a principle that is humane, understandable, and charming in its own way.

blogoramic: I realized that, in my haste, I was translating the topics of the best Lithuanian blog, with all my attention fixed on a single criterion: which one could I leave the most striking comments under, in the style of a blogoramic day, so that at least the tiniest streams of visitors might fill my sails?

blogger: [...] A blogger writes knowing that everyone will read it.

blogosphere, blogsphere: What is happening in the Lithuanian blogosphere?

blogospheric: The year has only just begun, and two excellent blogospheric projects have already launched.

blogoon: She reported on a conference of blogoons, so she could hardly call it anything else if the blogoons themselves call it that.

bloglet: The two of them [the authors. – R. M.] provide the context I draw on when talking about Latvian men's literature; more precisely, two programmatic works by these authors—Saks's bloglet “Written Off” and [...].

photoblog, phlog: [...] Dan Chung, a photographer for The Guardian, set off on a trip around the three Baltic states and shares his impressions and photographs on his photoblog. [...] I looked at your work in your phlogs.

linklog: “A tamblog is less than a ‘blog’; but more than a ‘linklog’. A happy medium between posts consisting solely of a link and headline and highly valuable (and often extensive) personal-diary reflections.”

moblog: A moblog is very easy to access—on a mobile phone, through a mobile internet portal.

tumblelog, tlog: If you liked “tumblelogs,” you can make your own with the Tumblr tool.

videoblog, vlog: [...] I filmed it and uploaded it to the video blog. I’m just briefly introducing what will be in this vlog.

One of the new ways of standardizing loanwords is to pluck off just the shoot, without seeing the root. In unconstrained, unregulated usage, blog and its derivatives have clearly taken root (e.g., [...] bloggers should not shut themselves away and write so much about blogging and other blogs.). Will the official-use term “tinklaraštis” be able to replace it?

There are active bloggers who are not afraid of the Lithuanian neologism and recognize the semantic coherence of the base words from which the word coined to name this phenomenon is formed: network and writing:

Community, quotation, and links in blogs create a unique effect. An idea, thought, plan, or exhortation published by one unknown and “unimportant,” perhaps anonymous, author, as it spreads “horizontally” through blogs, is quoted

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and requoted, growing into a powerful idea shared by the entire community, capable of influencing not only writers and readers but also society as a whole or fundamental matters of state. [...] The isolated publication of texts, by contrast, relies on the power of the author’s authority to influence the reader’s opinion. [...] Without the “network,” only the “writing” remains... (vienastoks)

More Lithuanian equivalents with the second element –raštis are also beginning to appear, as are phrases containing the word tinklaraštis, used to name various types and kinds of blogs: vaizdaraštis (video blog, English vlog), fototinklaraštis (English flog), nuorodinis tinklaraštis (English linklog), judrusis tinklaraštis (written using mobile communication devices, for example a phone; English moblog) (http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog). This shows that the Lithuanian neologism tinklaraštis is beginning to take root in usage¹⁰.

6. Bloggers’ language attitudes

Blogs contain various remarks, comments, and reflections about language and its use. This is not surprising, since people generally like discussing language matters online. Moreover, judging by the diversity of blogs examined, quite a few authors admit to encountering language-related problems and having to decide: what language and what style should they write in? More language-conscious authors sense that the “unaccented” style of electronic discourse, characterized by linguistic economy, is not suitable for blogs. Here is an excerpt from the essay “Do people become alienated when communicating virtually?” by a student in the upper grades, illustrating the attitude toward the language of electronic discourse that is typical among young people and still predominant:

Another advantage of virtual communication is that it is easy to communicate. Online communication does not require language skills or adherence to rules.

Blogs involve a different way of writing (with more forethought), a different length (longer), a different intended audience (there is an effort to interest more readers), and greater ease of reading (a longer text without diacritical marks is more tiring). Therefore, the blog text itself and its comments also differ markedly in these respects.

Of course, there are also texts written in the “unaccented” style, especially when writing from a mobile phone, but bloggers themselves consciously try to regulate usage by encouraging people to write with Lithuanian letters. For example, in 2006

¹⁰ For more on the competition between loans with the new root blog- and Lithuanian equivalents, and on usage trends, see Jurgita Girčienė’s article in this issue of Kalbos kultūros (pp. 50–64).

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toward the end, one blogger took the initiative, created a logo that anyone sympathetic to the cause could add to their blog, invited people to spread it, and in fact received quite a lot of support, as the logo began to spread across other blogs and entire blog sites:

ė propaganda!

Stop, stop, stop writing in haxor!

A terrible disease: when those afflicted not only scribble dreadful texts, but have even started giving themselves haxor nicknames when signing their names. [...]

I declare war on this and suggest that you, compatriots, take a flag each and carry it with you through your e-mails, blogs, messengers, and Skype into the haxor-ravaged electronic wastelands! (cloo)

The author of this initiative explained:

My aim is for people not to send me haxor letters, and especially not to ask me to reply in haxor. Then all sorts of ambiguities crop up—siausti or šiaušti, kipsas or kipsas, and so on. It’s hard and unpleasant to read. (cloo)

Another initiative is “I write in proper language.” To emphasize that blogs are consciously written in a language free from strict codified norms, and that following the rules is not obligatory, the term “proper language” was coined—as a kind of counterpoint to standard language:

I have a feeling that the blogosphere could become a catalyst for the fragmentation of the Lithuanian language. The language of the blogosphere has stronger self-regulatory mechanisms than ordinary slang. Blog content is public and “eternal”; authors try to please their readers, and therefore take note of comments on language and style; the blog genre constantly calls for the creation of one’s own speaking style; consequently, every blogger’s language is under strong pressure toward a certain New Average (essentially, a new variety of standard language). (R.Zu)

However, people do not distance themselves from standard language to such an extent that unrestricted linguistic freedom turns into uncontrollable chaos:

Our proper Lithuanian, in which we write our blogs (or weblogs, depending on who calls them what), although a restless, curious, glamorous girl, still manages to listen and understand. Standard Lithuanian has taught her to avoid kad with an infinitive, when speaking about purpose.

To feel the natural beauty of a thought flowing clear and pure, in a sense she closes her eyes, relaxes, and listens closely. “Kad pajusti” would sound rather uncultivated here,

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like a sweater pulled on inside out. So that you don’t make this foolish mistake, the native Lithuanian language winks at you: don’t be so feverishly quick to dress your thoughts in the sweaters of sentences... (R.Zu)

One distances oneself “from foolish slang, from disabled lisping,” yet writes in a variety of language that reflects actual usage (unedited by language specialists). Thus, what matters most is the author’s own linguistic ability, which is nevertheless regulated, to a greater or lesser extent, by the general public opinion taking shape across the blogosphere.

Understanding this, the news portal alfa.lt, which also publishes blogs by its employees, warns:

This blog is written by employees of the news portal Alfa.lt. Not all of them, only volunteers. The blog’s content is not censored, so the portal’s editorial position does not necessarily coincide with that of each author. And please don’t be annoyed by spelling mistakes—we write without the help of a language editor.

Here is another post about a television program on blogs:

The program lacked a real blogger, because I enjoy reading S. Stoma, but abroad this is called not a “blogger” but a “columnist.” It is not enough to call an opinion column a blog for it to become one. I think the discussion suffered because the interviewees had similar backgrounds (I apologize to lovers of the Lithuanian language, but Stoma also said “nickas.” It’s simply easier, more precise, and clearer that way). (gedzius29)

In our society, when speaking publicly and feeling that one is about to violate the norms of standard language, it is customary to “apologize to the linguists.” In the blogosphere they have no power at all, so—at last—people apologize to “lovers of the Lithuanian language.” An interesting line of research would be to examine how blog authors themselves express their attitudes toward the norms of standard language. For instance, one author, writing (under her own name, on an online news portal) about business blogs, uses quite a few translated constructions characteristic of bureaucratic language, without sensing that they are nonstandard (the hyperlinks are underlined):

Everything would be OK—it’s nice to meet people, and interesting to hear what bloggers think about whether such an initiative has proved worthwhile, and so on. But then Alfa’s blog went and fell out of context. What’s the deal?

But since writing a blog is now unequivocally fashionable, regardless of whether you have anything to say in it, it often becomes a headache for public relations people. As a result, we have blogs such as Monton, Pizza Jazz. (Dovilė Vaitkevičiūtė)

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However, in that post the author italicizes linguistic phenomena that are in some way distinctive to her: the hybrid unbelievably, the neologism creative workers¹¹, the slang word crazy-making, an adjective of her own invention, table-like, and the colloquial word soapbox (“such a camera”):

We write a blog ourselves. We devote an unbelievable amount of time to it, actively participate in the life of the blogosphere, and are friends with bloggers.

In general, I find it hard to imagine business-to-business blogs that promote sales. Well, perhaps professional blogs by employees could be useful to producers of services or intellectual products. For example, an advertising agency’s blog by its creative workers, where I can see their crazy ideas and think that they are the people who will come up with an idea powerful enough to knock a horse dead [...]

That is what my table-like way of thinking wants.

I cannot judge for myself, since the heights of my photographic expertise are limited to choosing preset modes on a soapbox camera. (Dovilė Vaitkevičiūtė)

So let us now take a closer look at the language of blogs itself. What is most evident in all its variety? What might make it interesting to language researchers?

II. THE LANGUAGE OF BLOGS

David Crystal notes that personal blogs encompass many types of linguistic activity. In the United States, it is electronic diaries that have proliferated most since 2001: their authors write about and reflect on their everyday lives, as is customary in diaries; sometimes they also publish attempts at their own creative work. However, authors must always bear in mind that this material is publicly accessible to everyone¹², and therefore be prepared for what they have written to be read sooner or later. This circumstance allows us to argue that language is not an entirely intimate, personal matter for the author, as it is in ordinary diaries: publicity requires adherence to certain generally accepted norms.

Thus, the most important feature of the language of blogs is the linguistic freedom determined by the form and characteristics of blogs themselves. Crystal describes it as lying between standard-

¹¹ It is evident how this neologism from the advertising field, in unregulated usage, is trying to take root in place of the borrowing kreatorius or krieitorius, used for a time (English creator).

¹² To ensure that people do not let their guard down, as when writing emails (which may be read by someone other than the addressee), various rules and principles for writing blogs have been devised. Crystal cites one of them: “Never put anything on a blog that you would not be prepared to defend in court.” (Crystal 2006: 242).

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…and not standard language. Crystal regards the following as the main criterion distinguishing the language and style of the several blogs discussed in his book from standard language: if this text were being prepared for publication, it would be corrected. The style of blogs reflects an unconstrained flow of thought, which does not always coincide with the boundaries of grammatical sentences; this brings the language closer to the way the author speaks. Until standard language emerged, letters were written in this style, and in the Middle Ages no one would have paid attention to it (this can supposedly be inferred from the manuscripts of some court proceedings), since it was the norm for all written texts. Later, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the requirements of standard language replaced it, and public written texts generally did not appear unedited. Blogs once again offer a unique opportunity to see unedited written language. This is written language in its barest, most unadorned form (Crystal 2006: 245).

1. Possibilities for studying the language of blogs

The world of blogs is so vast and diverse that, if one wished, one could prove anything: that the Lithuanian language is deteriorating, that it is barely alive, or, conversely, that everything is improving and people are becoming increasingly literate. Nevertheless, a more systematic investigation should reveal certain tendencies.

As was already evident from the examples given above, authors seek to reach a public consensus on language matters, so it cannot be said that this manifestation of language functions in a wholly chaotic manner. The first task, then, is to try to establish how norms of blog language are developing and what language standard is being sought. It should become clear whether there is an orientation toward a universal standard or whether different tendencies exist. In addition, the relationship of this language variety to other language varieties, especially standard language, needs to be assessed. No less important is an examination of the expressive means characteristic of blog language and the functions they perform in texts of this language variety. It seems there are also good opportunities to investigate the language and style of individual authors (idiolects).

Once the goal of studying blog language has been set and the issues associated with such research formulated, the diversity of authors, topics, and writing styles that lies before us makes it necessary to seek specific research directions and objectives¹³. It may be possi-

¹³For a fuller discussion of the possibilities of studying blog language sociolinguistically and of the features of blog language as a particular variety of usage, see R ita M il iū n a it ė. The place of blog language in the scheme of contemporary usage. – Online journal Lithuanian Language, 2008. Available online: www.lietuviukalba.lt

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bilities, and also that, owing to the specific nature of the internet, this language variety is highly open to rapid change.

The most tangible criteria that could help us navigate the multitude of blogs might be of two kinds—based on the authors and on the content of the blogs:

1) authors’ social characteristics:

age (different age groups),

social status,

education.

2) subject matter.

For a long time, research into actual written usage had a considerable gap, because most Lithuanian written usage consisted of public language, which usually reached its audience only through intermediaries—language editors. Students’ essays, unedited manuscripts, and the like are much less accessible for such research, since they are intended not for the public but for a limited number of people. Blog language is not edited by anyone from outside; it is created without intermediaries. Thus, blogs represent actual written usage. The stable, written form of blogs and unobstructed access to their texts create all the conditions for language researchers’ dreams to come true: to observe directly a natural language as it is created and functions. For those who codify standard language, such research can help clarify what changes in Lithuanian are occurring in an environment close to standard language, and how these two public language varieties—standard language and the free language of the internet environment (vernacular language)—affect one another. According to one blogger, standard language is what language regulators try to put into speakers’ mouths, whereas vernacular language is what they could take back out of people’s mouths (R.Zu).

This article does not aim to cover all of this diversity. Its concern is to reveal just one or two more striking features of blog language. The discussion that follows will draw on blog posts collected for a preliminary exploratory study (nearly one hundred in all¹⁴) from the online sources listed at the end of the article.

2. Linguistic features of Lithuanian blogs

To bring the linguistic features of blogs into sharper focus, it is useful to compare their language with the better-studied electronic discourse (in the narrower sense mentioned in footnote 3). Blog posts are usually up to 100 words long, less often up to

¹⁴To study the language of blogs in depth, a representative and methodologically sound database must be compiled. The aim of this article, for now, is merely to take the broadest possible look around the difficult-to-survey expanse of the blogosphere.

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200 words. In this respect they differ particularly clearly from comments, which are usually a few sentences long and, most importantly, are entirely uninformative on their own, without the main text being commented on (Marcinkevičienė 2005: 23). Blog texts are longer and develop a topic independently, and therefore have a logical structure (at least several paragraphs). At the same time, complete freedom of anonymity, which allows people to behave without restraint in electronic discourse, is no longer possible; consequently, blog posts exhibit greater personal involvement and accountability. This noticeably affects their language as well: it becomes more organized. Creating language of this kind takes more effort than electronic discourse does.

Although the language and style of this field are only beginning to develop, it is nevertheless clear that much is carried over from electronic discourse. Over time, however, one may assume, certain writing fashions will emerge, as will boundaries beyond which some things will strike readers as authors’ attempts to stand out. As has been seen, the authors themselves are already aware of this and try to apologize if they think they are deviating from an imagined universally accepted standard.

Apie elektroninio diskurso kalbos ypatumus Asta Ryklienė (2000: 101) rašo:

The speed and informality of the technical medium—the internet—encourage unofficial and informal, spontaneous and unconsidered writing in short phrases, with self-corrections, fillers, ellipses, inversion, shortened words, and informal vocabulary.

Blog texts contain these features too, but in more moderate measure. Another important difference between the language of blogs and electronic discourse is that “participants in online communication nevertheless tend to view it more as a process, an unfolding (spoken language), rather than as an event, a product (written language)” (Ryklienė 2000: 102). Bloggers’ aim is to create a “product,” that is, a post on a particular topic that others can read and discuss. This is essentially what gives blog texts a closer connection with written language: on the continuum between written and spoken language, electronic discourse is closer to transcribed speech, while blogs are closer to traditional written language. Yet here, too, the written form makes it possible to write in a way that does not stray too far from spoken language, thus creating the impression of lively, natural language.

The style of blogs is most often close to journalistic prose (except for creative writing). Texts of various genres can be found here—from news items or reports and analytical commentary to book or concert reviews (on journalistic genres, see Bitinienė 2007, Marcinkevičienė 2008).

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2.1. Freedom of writing

Blogging could be called a kind of language reality show: everyday tasks are performed and everyday thoughts are pondered, but once written down, all of it is presented to the public. To create the impression of natural writing, people sometimes like to show crossed-out text that the author wrote and then, after changing their mind, struck through, as happens when writing by hand on paper. Here is a nineteen-year-old student’s post:

10 commitments

1. Stop swearing. Although I don’t use swear words online, in real life they slip out. Too much, too often.

2. Be lazy. Don’t be lazy.

3. Study hard. Not for grades or a scholarship, but for myself. Just for the knowledge.

4. Live in style, die in luxury.

5. If possible, use an environmentally friendly fuel for getting around—your legs.

6. Don’t lie, though I’m trying to do it as rarely as possible.

7. Try to see the positive side in everything.

[...] (hattori)

Thus, the language of blogs is free public usage. The well-known journalist Virginijus Valentinavičius, director of the news portal alfa.lt, relaxed and having allowed himself to loosen his tie, yet maintaining a certain distance from readers—a distance shaped both by the topic under discussion and by his undisclosed identity (all the more so given his position as head of the portal)—writes on his blog about political correctness [some of the more interesting linguistic elements have been highlighted by me. – R. M.]:

Political Correctness: Practical-Olympic Aspects

[...] And who gave the footballers permission to trample the grass? Oh, who dares to limit the wording to men alone and not write “who lets the footballers (male and female) trample the grass”? Oh dear—why is the feminine ending in parentheses, rather than the masculine?

Marxism in actionmeans that everything has its material cause, and political correctness (PC) is a way of thinking that insistently demands that all those causes be explained.

[...]

A few pages of Spectator’s are filled with text written with a playful hand, doing nothing but applying liberal (in the American sense) ideas consistently and straightforwardly to practical matters such as the Olympics. But...but...but...—consistency and logic are the dominance of Eurocentric rationalism over primitive irrationality, the repression of the general over the particular, the dominance of reason over foolishness—eeehm, well perhaps we should look for another, more PC, word that erases the divide.

By the way, why is it written in black on white, rather than the other way around, and how will white, heterosexual, cisgender Christian men and global capitalism answer for it?

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Well, and the Lithuanian Catholic Church for that matter. And the Church of Poland, in short, the dominance structures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And by the way, why do consonants dominate vowels in Polish? To be continued in all newspapers.

The excerpt also contains questions characteristic of spoken language, intended to create the illusion of a direct conversation with the reader. There are more parenthetical expressions than in conventional written language (by the way, well, and the ironic in short), interjections (oh, oh my goodness, um), repetitions (But... but... but...). There are also spelling practices devised to make informal written language easier (to speed up the writing itself). In this case, this is shown by the way foreign, indeclinable elements are presented in the text (PC-esnio, Spectator’iaus), so that when read aloud they sound as they would in natural spoken language, that is, with endings. Of course, the English quotations inserted into the text also catch the eye (words, phrases, and even a whole sentence). The author could not do this in formal spoken or written language.

2.2. Relationship with Standard Language

Several degrees have been proposed for describing the quality of Standard Lithuanian: 1) poor—with major damage to the system; 2) satisfactory—with no major language errors; 3) good—with no significant violations of norms; 4) exemplary (Klimavičius 2002: 23). When studying the language of blogs, the phenomena occurring in it can be described according to whether they conform to Standard Language norms, and thus something akin to such degrees could also be introduced; however, the approach to linguistic phenomena here should be descriptive, not evaluative.

In blogs, people are free to choose the way of speaking (writing) that seems most appropriate to them in a given situation. Since this is a public sphere but is not officially regulated, there is no obligation to observe Standard Language norms, much less to regulate them by any official means. Therefore, it should be emphasized that it would hardly be appropriate to regard the language of blogs as some distorted form of Standard Language or as a deviation from accepted Standard Language norms. Like electronic discourse, blogs are a particular medium of language use in which various language varieties can emerge. Of course, one of these may be Standard Language, in a less formal style.

The language of this medium, like dialects or social and professional jargon, does not fall within the scope of conscious regulation (codification) of language norms. It is up to each person what language they use and how much they allow themselves to be influenced by their surroundings, which may compel them to change their modes of linguistic expression (for example, to write without omitting diacritics).

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2.3. Variation and the Abundance of Elements from Diverse Origins

One of the most striking features of blog texts is the variation in linguistic means of expression. This phenomenon is also reflected in electronic discourse, but there its prominence is limited by the brevity of the texts themselves, and it is not as evident as in longer posts. Variation is also found in informal spoken language, but its very nature and fragmentary character make it much harder to document. Thus, it can be said that in blogs, variants of actual usage operate in the most tangible form and on a scale not found today in any other manifestation of written Lithuanian.

Here is an excerpt from an eighteen-year-old’s blog post (the variants of interest are highlighted):

The Love Jar

Hello, today xLapinux¹⁵ and I made a great “love jar.” It’s very easy to make and quite an original little gift, so next Valentine’s Day you can save yourself some money and stop giving everyone those long-ago tiresome little flower corpses. First, we’ll need a jar. It’s important that it be transparent and have a lid. You might pick a glass container that costs more than the sweets themselves, so be alert. Cheaper (and usually prettier) jars can be found in kitchenware shops (in case you’re tempted to grab a jar from the same supermarket as the sweets), and “one-euro” shops are an absolute gold mine. We had a half-liter jar

Next, you’ll need sweets—we bought dragées and gummy candies, but which ones you choose depends on your other half’s taste: [photographs illustrating how the gift was made inserted into the text. – R. M.]

I think this is quite a clever idea

Obviously, it’s not exactly an intellectual high point, but I imagine it would be much nicer to receive a jar of sweets for an occasion than some flower. Or, if your budget allows, you can give both. Though personally, I like giving gifts without waiting for special occasions (Enorca)

In everyday speech, this author’s jar and flower—most likely picked up from their parents or grandparents—are used deliberately, clearly with the intention of enlivening the style.

Not only does the use of individual words vary. The same text may contain both colloquial or professional jargon and insertions from several languages, making the linguistic expression very varied. Even the title of the post is in English:

Trip to seaside

This long weekend I went on a trip to the seaside with my woman, specifically to Palanga (i know, it’s not the best resort in Lithuania, but when you have free accommodation,

¹⁵

The author means a friend of his who uses this nickname, which is also a hyperlink to that friend’s blog.

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it works out just fine). As we expected, there were quite a lot of people there, but at least there were only a few stupid little beasts (I’m talking about marozai and other freaks of nature). The trip was fun; I covered about 1,100 km: Vilnius - Klaipėda - Palanga - Uošvija - Kaunas - Alytus - Vilnius. I feel as though I’ve had a proper vacation, except that I just can’t recover at work, can’t get back into the rhythm, and always feel sleepy. (Povilas)

Or a post by a twenty-year-old studying information technology (hyperlinks underlined):

The fight against spam

Well, yeah... They spammed it, all right. In two days I deleted neither a lot nor a little from the diary—700 comments and guestbook entries... Polnyj [...] [An omitted mild Russian swearword. – R. M..]. Fortunately, I’ve found the solution;) And I found it in Nežinomo’s diary post, where he described having the same problem. And that post was commented on by a certain Pkmk [...] In the comment he suggested using akismet.com’s services. And THERE I found a link to AchingBrain, who (which?) adapted that whole tool for PHP5’s. So I downloaded that tool and adapted it for my diary.:) And there you go, in an hour it had already caught 41 comments:) Yeee;) At last I can breathe easier and know I won’t have to rummage around in the morning deleting all that crap... (~tapkius~)

Elements of diverse origins are characteristic of blogs by authors of different ages and writing about various topics. One might think that authors with better writing skills and more education try to set off foreign-origin elements in some way. For instance, a professional journalist’s habit of putting foreign words in quotation marks carries over into the blog:

Recently, in a private conversation, I overheard a snippet of doctors’ black humor. They let slip that... potential organ donors are “britvininkai”. Jokes are made about this, too. A funeral services company manager calls a “britvų” shop. “How many motorcycles did you sell yesterday?” “Four,” the seller replies. “Aaa, so we’ve got three already; the fourth is probably still racing around,” the manager concludes. [...] I’ll try to look at the situation from the outside. I know a little about driving technique and culture: I’m the editor of Alfa.lt’s Wheels section, I take part in rallies and in automotive test-drives. I’m not a member of any bikers’ club, but I’ve ridden both a “britva” and a “čioperiu” on more than one occasion. (Žilvarskas)

Foreign elements may be set in italics [the author’s italics are emphasized by me. – R. M.]:

And even if the end result won’t change, at least those svolačiams will suffer;) And I’ll feel better in my heart too;)

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[...] tries not to flaunt this trait of theirs, often couching comments in irony, slang, or a simple joke. This points to such personality traits as a sense of humor, the ability to adapt to one’s surroundings, high communication skills and easy-going chatting. [...]

The main problem with creating that description remains the same, and is well known to those who have visited here a few times: I don’t know how to write briefly. Everything seems important to me. I write more briefly only when I don’t have time, but absolutely want to say something... But I will do it. Someday;) [...]

But the most important occasion is that today marks exactly one year since I started polluting the airwaves here;) Jo jo, hooray hooray, RedVel’s blog has now been online for a full 365 days online, delighting and annoying a few regulars and a dozen or so random’inių visitors;) I’ll post an annual review later, but for now this idea won’t leave me alone;) (RedVel)

Elsewhere, as was already evident from the previous examples, a foreign word or phrase, or even a whole sentence, is often inserted into Lithuanian text without any distinguishing marks (bolding throughout is mine. – R. M.):

One of the usability recommendations is to follow cultural conventions, such as “left means counterclockwise.” (Dominykas Blyžė)

Anyway L. Donskis was right that we are on the threshold of changes in the media, but I don’t share that much enthusiasm when talking about Lithuania. (gedzius29)

Well, once you get involved in this on comercial basis, you have to make sure that your income is stable. (e.f.i.)

NO, my mind tells me, and I go back to taking notes on accounting theory. Just to let you know, i’m not dead:) (Viktorija)

Alongside foreign-origin elements, there are also various manifestations of slang. If by slang we mean linguistic means of expression characteristic of certain social groups (most often young people and students), we see that it is used in blog posts when the author has chosen a corresponding manner of speaking and has a particular audience in mind. Some authors do this probably unconsciously, because they have not yet developed the skills of public speaking (writing); others deliberately seek to identify with a particular group, to “get the feel” of that group’s way of speaking. For example, a student writes:

Tomorrow, or rather today – matkės revision session, I’m going to the university and will take care of a bunch of things there. (Viktorija)

Such texts, of course, put readers off, since they are not understandable to everyone, but this in itself sets apart groups of people with certain views and interests.

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There are not many such texts in the general stream. For example, when Lithuanian blogs began to emerge, in 2005 an author studying telecommunications physics and electronics wrote:

C# and garbage collecting

I’m currently learning.NET/C#, i.e., I want to be a developer riding the wave:) Unlike many people, I don’t consider Microsoft products evil by default, so, having used the aforementioned things only a little, I dare to express my opinion. The.NET framework is a wonderful thing; there’s nothing better—it has almost everything you might need, and everything is compatible with everything else. The downside of C++ and the frameworks/libs that came before it was that you had to make everything work together, and often nothing good came of it; for example, you iterate through some directory with boost::filesystem, write the results into a std::vector, and finally put them into some wx::ListBox. Nothing good about that, in short.

And now about C#. I’m a science person, as it happens, and so far C++ is the language closest to my dream language. C# is good because it fixes some of C++’s bad features, but unfortunately it doesn’t have most of C++’s good features (well, C# 2.0 promises to fix some of that).

And now, a little more about one such thing—garbage collecting. (Saulius)

It is understandable that only “developers” like the author himself can grasp the meaning of such a text.

Research into the variation in blog language and elements of diverse origins could help us better understand when authors use expressive means in a motivated, conscious way, and when these have become established in their usage as competing variants.

2.4. Spelling and punctuation

Tinklaraščių kalboje, kaip ir kitose vadinamųjų medialektų (žr. Hjarvard 2004: 75–97), t. y. elektroninėje terpėje funkcionuojančios kalbos, apraiškose, pirmiausia į akis krinta formalieji skirtumai nuo tradicinės rašytinės ir spausdintinės kalbos: įvairūs specialūs grafiniai ženklai, sutrumpinimai ir pan.

In addition, blog authors bring different spelling habits from their everyday writing activities: work (if they are people who write for a living), comments, and text messages. As a result, the variety of spelling styles is at its greatest. One can find texts without Lithuanian letters, as well as examples of highly simplified and almost perfect spelling. Weak spelling skills are clearly evident in many places (užmiestyn, išsprendė, esu deointam dangui), which are undoubtedly further encouraged by the “shveplavimas” (writing without diacritics) fad.

Writing sentences without spaces, separating them only with punctuation marks, as is customary in text messages to save space, is quite rare in blog posts:

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A couple of days ago I joined an initiative called What is a blog?. What is the aim of this initiative? It is very simple—to introduce ordinary Lithuanians to something as wonderful as a blog (Lith. *tinklaraštis*), so that people will not later think [...] (a person who has something to say)

Proper names are treated freely. Sometimes better-known surnames are written with a lowercase initial, while symbolic names are not distinguished at all:

Do Microsoft and the investment-capital bosses ever wonder why Adidas does not buy Nike, Toyota does not buy Ford, and Coca-Cola does not buy Pepsi? Even if the competition authorities allowed it? Because the resulting internal confusion, competition and coordination between product lines, “personnel wars,” layoffs, and the departure of the most talented with their ambitions bruised would probably be the best gift to Reebok, Volkswagen and... um... Švenčionėliai soft drinks, respectively. (vienastoks)

Tinklaraščių tekstų skyryba panaši į elektroninio diskurso (plg. Ryklienė 2000: 102) – palyginti laisva, dažnai sukelianti nerūpestingumo įspūdį, skyrybos ženklų mažiau nei būtinai turėtų būti rašant normine kalba. Tačiau jei koks autorius skyrybos taisykles visiškai ignoruoja ir rašo be kablelių, gauna skaitytojų atkirtį: tokį tekstą skaityti per sunku.

2.5. Interjections

In blog posts, various emotions are expressed both through emoticons¹⁶, which are more characteristic of electronic discourse, and through interjections expressed in the traditionally understood verbal form. There is a great variety of such interjections—both Lithuanian and borrowed, variously adapted, and probably even made up on the spot while writing. Here are just a few examples:

eeehm: [...] eeehm, well, perhaps we should look for another [...] word here.

et: Et, someday, when fortune smiles on us, we’ll have to go back there again.

grrrrrrowl: Grrrrrowl.!!! One day, dragons will conquer the entire universe and a thousand years of peace will reign.

yep: Yep, I go into a trance and see a binder full of numbers and Excel charts before me.

muahahaha: To direct the senses toward good things and leave the bad ones to self-destruction. Muahahaha.

¹⁶ The Explanatory Dictionary of Computer Terms (KTAŽ) recommends calling various graphic symbols used to express emotions (English *emoticon*) *jaustukai* (‘interjections’), but this is inconvenient in this article (and not only here), since *jaustukas* is used in the traditional grammatical sense. In the article, the established usage terms *šypsniukai*, *šypsenėlės*, *veidukai* (‘smileys,’ ‘little smiles,’ ‘faces’), and the like, referring to graphic symbols, are called *jausmaženkliai* (‘emotion symbols’).

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nea: [...] briefly about what caught my attention. And about what nea;)

oi oi: Oi oi, if I understood all sorts of limits and integrals at university, surely I can understand a point of view on life?

oj, ojojoj: Ojojoj – why is the ending in parentheses feminine rather than masculine?

uoj: Uoj, how witty.

wow: Yesterday's top news. The iPhone is coming to Lithuania! wow!!! I believe everyone forgot one word—officially.

2.6. Language innovations

The language of blogs is interesting in another respect: here one can clearly see how officially proposed neologisms take root, especially equivalents for foreign words. If authors use them naturally, without any metalinguistic commentary, one may assume that these neologisms are being accepted, for example:

I didn't like that, when I plugged in the USB flash drive, two extra drives would appear in “My Computer”. [...]. (Criminal)

In addition, the authors themselves use new words in both meaning and form—both occasional formations coined for a single use and new words that may be intended to spread more widely. Neologisms may be created by the authors themselves, modeled on the structure of words in other languages, or translated in part or in full. Thus, blogs, including their comments, offer many examples of linguistic creativity—both successful and unsuccessful—showing language users' ability or inability to draw on the resources of their own language's expressive means. Here are just a few examples:

find: I saddle up my browser, blowing mental dust off the attic I haven't visited in ages. Aha, there's a search! I give it a try, the latest find [...].

seat: I always wonder on the trolley—what if sound from my headphones carries too loudly into the surroundings? But if I sit alone in a two-seater “seat”, and later someone sits down beside me and grimaces at my music (or maybe not at the music), I mentally tell them to go to hell—“why sit next to someone who's playing music?”

read oneself out: [...] I'm read out on blogs (well, something like having eaten too much).

laundry day: At weekends, one day [...] is laundry day.

trashbook: I hardly ever read book reviews, but I have a special eighth sense, so trashbooks rarely fall into my hands. But reading reviews of such trashbooks can sometimes be quite amusing.

Thus, studying the language and style of blogs offers inexhaustible possibilities. Here we find the emergence of new meanings, phraseology, sentence characteristics, wordplay,

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wit. A great deal of expressiveness, creativity, and authorial self-expression. Here is an account of how an ordinary shopping trip and conversation with a sales assistant, in the face of modern technology, turn into self-service. There is no cashier at the checkout, and the shopper has to talk to a computer (italics – by the blog author):

The Cost of (Not) Being Green

Yesterday, having popped in to stock up the fridge, beeped through all the goods and packed them into that plastic – green, yellow, and white bag, I was met with an unexpected question on the computer screen.

“Quantity required: how many bags did you use?”

My first thought was that these were just statistics. My second—and correct—thought was that I would have to pay. Just one, dear computer, only one bag did I use, and that only because I have no intention of stuffing a packet of frozen vegetables into the computer case. (Ieva Baranauskaitė)

A few decades ago, when it seems no one in Lithuania could yet have had any idea of the internet, a literature lecturer advised his students, who were of course intending to become writers: Write—make sure you write at least a page in your diary every evening. Without writing regularly, nothing will come of it. Indeed, writing encourages thought, strengthens language-expression skills, and develops style; for young people, who make up the majority of bloggers, it is an excellent environment for growth. So one would like to have no doubt: the future on the internet belongs—not to writers, but to people who can write well.

CONCLUSIONS

1. A new form of self-expression and communication that appeared on the internet just over a decade ago—online diaries, or blogs—is already widespread in the Lithuanian part of the internet. A new manifestation of Lithuanian language use has emerged alongside it. It is distinctive in that written language is created here without intermediaries and is not specially regulated by anyone, yet the texts written in it are made public and accessible to all.

2. The variety of blogs, their different authors and subject matter, at first glance reveals only the most general features of the language and possible directions for more in-depth research, so there is not yet any basis for drawing conclusions. Nevertheless, the prevalent lexical strata and origins, the modes of expression preferred, the occasionalisms coined, and the ways in which neologisms take hold or are rejected make it clear that the language of this medium is an interesting phenomenon and fertile ground for research into actual public written usage.

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3. The language of blogs can be described as a certain new informal variety of public written language—one of the manifestations of the electronic medium, the so-called medialects, alongside electronic discourse (comments, text messages sent by phone and instant messages, etc.). Functioning on the margins of, and beyond, the use of consciously regulated written standard language, it is much more variable. Although in more than a few cases it is a mixture of elements from various language varieties and, especially, other languages, most often English, it is hardly appropriate to view the language of blogs as some kind of distorted form of standard language.

4. It is evident that efforts are being made in the blogosphere to reach public agreement among authors on language issues; in addition, language use is also influenced by readers’ public opinion. Thus, it cannot be said that this manifestation of language is developing in a wholly chaotic manner.

5. The popularity and prevalence of blogs suggest that the impact of their expressive forms on standard Lithuanian and the development of its norms will be undeniable. Alongside this informal (non-standard) written language, the characteristics and social purpose of standard language itself become clearer. Thus, the language of blogs can be viewed as actual usage, in which both new tendencies and the possibility of supporting or revising the codification of standard language are evident.

ŠALTINIAI

http://blogologas.lt/

http://kasyrablogas.lt

http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

http://verslas.blogas.lt

http://visiblogai.lt

http://www.alfa.lt

http://www.blogas.lt

http://www.blogeriai.lt

http://www.blogeriai.net

http://www.mtv.lt/blogai

http://www.nezinau.lt/

http://www.rzu.lt

http://www.vlkk.lt

LITERATŪRA

Bitinienė A. 2007: Publicistinis stilius, Vilnius: Vilniaus pedagoginis universitetas.

Crystal D. 2006: Language and the Internet, 2-nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Donskis L. 2008: Užnuodyta viešoji erdvė. – www.balsas.lt, balandžio 18. Prieiga internete: http://www.balsas.lt/naujiena/192269

DŽ₆: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas. Vyr. red. Stasys Keinys. 6-as (3-ias elektroninis) leid., Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2006.

Hjarvard S. 2004: The Globalisation of Language. How the Media Contribute to the Spread of English and the Emergence of Medialects. – Nordicom Review 1–2. Nordicom: Gothenburg University, 75–97. Prieiga internete: http://www.nordicom.gu.se/common/publ_pdf/157_075-098.pdf

Huffaker D. A., Calvert S. L. 2005: Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs. – Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(2). Prieiga internete: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html

Klimavičius J. 2002: Lietuvių bendrinė kalba: ribos ir beribiškumas, sistema, norma ir kodifikacija. – Terminologija 9, 7–25.

KTAŽ: Kompiuterijos terminų aiškinamasis žodynas. Prieiga internete: http://aldona.mii.lt/pms/terminai/term/z2odynas.html

Marcinkevičienė R. 2005: Internetinių straipsnių komentarai žanriniu aspektu. – Tekstas: lingvistika ir poetika 14. Mokslinės konferencijos medžiaga, Šiaulių universitetas: Šiaulių universiteto leidykla, 22–23.

Marcinkevičienė R. 2008: Žanro ribos ir paribiai. Spaudos patirtys, Vilnius: Versus aureus.

Miliūnaitė R. 2008: Tinklaraščių kalbos vieta dabartinės lietuvių kalbos vartosenos schemoje. – Lietuvių kalba [internetinis mokslo žurnalas]. Prieiga internete: www.lietuviukalba.lt

Ryklienė A. 2000: Bendravimas internetu: kalbėjimas rašant. – Darbai ir dienos 24, 99–107.

Vedrickas A. 2007: Web 2.0 – naujoji interneto karta. – Lietuvos rytas (Kompiuterija), sausio 15. Prieiga internete: http://kompiuterija.lrytas.lt/zurnale/2007-01-15/web-20-%E2%80%93-naujoji-interneto-karta

Gauta 2008 07 08

A FIRST GLIMPSE AT THE LANGUAGE OF BLOGS

Summary

More than a decade ago the first blogs appeared on the world web ^(www); around the year 2000 the Lithuanian internet set up its first blogs; in 2006–2007 it witnessed their boom. The article describes blogs as a new internet form of self-expression and communication, its role in social communication and its linguistic

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expression as well as possible frameworks of linguistic analysis. The article also discusses the problem of coining Lithuanian blog-related concepts and offers an overview of the terms in actual use.

The analysis of almost a hundred of blogs produced by authors of different ages and focusing on different topics could hardly lead to any final conclusions and generalisations. However, the pilot linguistic investigation has resulted in identifying some new features of the blog language. The language of blogs is peculiar in that its written form evolves with no mediators or regulators; however, its texts are easily accessible to the public. Therefore, language specialists have a unique opportunity to research actual public written use, to investigate its characteristic features of linguistic expression and functions of the features in the texts. A large variety of blogs, different authors (and the data provided about themselves) give access to investigating the layers and origin of prevalent lexis, dominating modes of expression, specific features of occasional words, how language innovations come into use or are rejected etc. Moreover, all of the above can be related to the social features of the authors and the topics of the texts.

The language of blogs can be defined as a new variety of free-style public written language, one of the forms of electronic medium, the so called medialects, and can be discussed alongside with electronic discourse (comments, e-mails, telephone text messages (SMS) and instant messages). The language of blogs functions on the periphery of regulated standard language and beyond its boundaries; it is much more varied. In many cases it is a mixture of elements from different language varieties and different languages (mainly English); therefore, it should not be treated as a perverse form of standard language.

In the blogosphere the authors seem to take efforts to publicly negotiate language issues; moreover, the language use is influenced by the public opinion of the readers. Therefore, this language variety cannot be claimed as being completely chaotic. The popularity of blogs and their wide spread would presumably exert major influence on standard Lithuanian and the development of its norms. Thus the language of blogs can be treated as actual use with some obvious new developments, on the one hand, and a possibility to maintain the codification of the standard language or its modification, on the other hand.

RITA MILIŪNAITĖ

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

[email protected]

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