Solstice Blogging, A Typically Post-Modern, Self-Conscious Examination of Blog Language

Tonight is the longest night of the year, so it's uncannily appropriate to examine how TIME affects the language used in blogging.

The blog as a genre of writing has specific rules inherent in the form. The rules expressed in the format of a blog help us know what to do with the information being communicated. The blog, like it's predecessor, the log, requires an entry date marking the post's arrival in the public realm, much like a journal entry is typically preceded by a date. The difference between the journal and the web log is that the blog is always destined for the public domain. The journal or diary carries within it something of the writer's privacy. (That's why Anais Nin's journal was so titillating when it was published. The genre of the private transgressed boarders into public domain and excited the readerships' sensitivity to privacy taboos.) The revelation of a diary entry is assumed to be an exposure of innermost secrets. Something of the personal, casual language of diaries has carried over into the style of language typical to blogs. Check out some of the blogs highlighted under the "My Blog List" bar to the right for other examples of blog style.

There is something of the diary style to be acknowledged as essential to blogging. Blog's are typically in the first person, recounting experiences had by the blogger: a public persona integral to the creation of the entry. The blogger-persona’s subjective connection to everything reported in the blog makes time an essential element in the blog format. The dated entries give order and a framework for the presentation of otherwise random experiences. Topics of entries can bounce around without a clear, logical progression, other than the progression that is evident in the passing of time.

Time's relevance to the blog is evident in stylistic elements drawn from diary entries. Have you ever kept a journal or diary as a kid and started the entry like this:

Dear Diary,

It has been soooo long since my last entry.

I've started journals this way and then spent oodles of pages trying to catch up on everything of note that happened since the previous entry.

There are discussions and commentaries online about the lameness of blog entries like the mock diary entry above. Especially berated are the blog entries trying to recount excuses why other entries have not been made consistently. The fusion of academic and bloggy writing styles that here culminates as the Boulder C.O.P.A. removes the necessity of regular entries and assuages any guilt that might still be lingering in me from my grade school experiences of inconsistent journaling. This longest night of solstice entries and the once-in-a-lifetime deadline of a school project eradicates my shame for being an inconsistent blogger. I've got to post it all tonight!

An epistolary is another genre of writing that has inherent rules and, as a stylistic predecessor to the blog, influences blog language. The audience/reader of a letter is usually named specifically in the salutation. As a reader of epistolary, one understands his or her role at the start of every letter: either addressee or eavesdropper.

You, blog reader, are not quite a specific addressee, nor an eavesdropper. You are anonymous, floating through the blogosphere and landing like a bee on a flower with pollen you can use. That's why websites offering tips on how to write a blog (http://www.blog.mrfire.com/) emphasize the importance of giving the blog reader information they value, so they subscribe to the blog and keep reading. If you have landed here at the Boulder C.O.P.A. Blog and keep reading, one may assume you are likely educated, of a class of people who can afford the technology necessary to access the web, and hopefully, are interested in something to do with Boulder, oral poetry, cafe culture, language or some hodge podge of all of the above.

Finally, there is another stylistic element present in the Boulder C.O.P.A. Blog. The academic term paper as a genre makes use of a formal citation style. Citations are important for accuracy in scholarship and so, are relevant in this fusion project. Fortunately, here on the web, all information is linked. You'll find references highlighted in the text instead of the MLA or Chicago style of citations. Hyperlinks replace footnotes and shape the casual, smart style.

To entertain and enthrall the semi-random audience of strangers and poets that visit this blog, the language used here must hover somewhere between two different kinds of usage. The cross-genre challenge: to use an easily accessible, casual style of writing that behooves blogs while expressing complex, academic ideas about language and culture, especially within the field of contemporary American folklore.

Well, that's where the beauty of the blog's flexibility as a new kind of writing comes into play. Blogs are typically built in little doses over many months of entries. This longest night of entries gives the blog a heavy dose of Insta-Blog Miracle Grow, something that might make the blog less authentically a blog when contrasted with the lovingly cultivated blog of long record, but the longest night of entries ads to the experiment of cross-genre blogging. The Boulder C.O.P.A. Blog is both instantly published public information and an academic project that I am submitting to help me finish grad school, truly an experiment in cross-genre writing. This blog is unusual in that it has an audience consisting of random web surfers interested in oral poetry, Boulder, or any other Google search words that might draw them here AND the audience of at least one very important faculty member at CU, my professor (Hi Mike!).