Talk-around-text interview

To conduct the talk-around-text interview, five texts were chosen from the participant’s blog-texts: four texts by the blog-writer herself and one by the researcher. Table 37 shows the texts, their titles and genres and the issues the blog-writer raised during the interview. The interview was carried out around five blog-texts, Texts 4, 7, 9, 10 and 11, which are shown in Table 37.

Table 37: Talk-around-text interviews

Texts Title Genre Linguistic elements in

blog-texts

Non-linguistic elements in blog- texts

Text 4 She went Anecdote  1st person pronoun and its derivations

 Interrogative clauses

 Active and passive voice

 Comments

 Pictures

 Emoticons Text 9 Sponge Bob Descriptive

report Text 11 The end of this

term

Anecdote Text 7 This college

makes me frustrated:@

Narrative

Text 10 If I could be invisible for a day, what the??!!

Consequential explanation

Table 37 shows, the blog-writer was asked about the reason for her linguistic choices to find the purpose of the produced genres in Blog 2. She referred to some specific features through which she construed meanings in her texts.

6.5.3 Summary of the interviews

In the interviews, the blog-writer stated that she used her blog to share her feelings and emotions with the audience. She said, “If I have anything interesting to write or if I have a problem and I need help, I would directly open my blog and post whatever I want and publish it to see what advice people can give”. She explained that the reason behind Text 10 (Sponge Bob) was to attract more people to her blog, “I thought of changing the topic this time and make it more interesting for people to read about it”; it seems that one of the purposes of writing in her blog is to express her real personality, which she cannot show in real life. She said, “it’s my favourite cartoon character and I like publishing stuff, I like so people can know different sides of my personality […] so I can see what people comment about it”. This shows how blog-space can be used as a means of self-expression and identity work, which can draw people into the texts and engage them with in the discourse.

As she said, she wrote Text 4 (She went) because she wanted to express her sad feelings and the problem she might face, “because I have to deal with new people and get used to it. I

think it’s hard to cope so easily, depends on how people would think about me […]”. She also highlighted the role of the audience, as an advisor, which contributes to the interactivity of this blog; she said that the audience “ told me to be happy for her if this is what she wants for her future and I shouldn’t be sad about it; I just have to stay in touch”. On another point she said, “I wrote about my daily routine because I thought maybe I have to change this routine […] so I share it to get people’s opinion”. This shows how blogs can be used as a means of interaction between the blog-writer and the audience; these interactions can affect the lexico-grammatical features of the discourse used in the exchange between them.

She stated that she could use the first personal pronoun when speaking in her native language; she says, “For me it’s OK; I think it won’t be a big problem if we actually use it when we talk”. However, she raised some concerns about using the same pronoun in her homework and exam papers: “In writing assignments it is important to keep it formal […]; blog helps me express my feelings more because I can write whatever I want without making it formal”. She referred to the relaxed environment of blog-space several times throughout her interviews. For example, she says, “It is a relaxing area to write in any time I feel like it. I just write about anything pops into my mind and publish it”. This shows that the blog environment can create a context where blog-writers can practise their knowledge free from the boundaries which a pen and paper context might impose. She highlights the role of the audience in motivating her to write in her blog: “I like receiving comments from others and write to them”. This shows how blogging can change writing from a solitary act to an engaging cooperative one, where a sense of audience and community can influence not only the writer’s discourse in her texts but her writing habits. This can be considered an advantage of blogs that language practitioners and learners can benefit from. This blog is amplified by the uses of indicative (active voice) clauses. The blog-writer expressed her reason for her choice, “Active is more comfortable for me […] because I think it’s an easier way to describe something […]”.

In the interview, she also referred to the use of interrogative clauses in her text. For instance, she used an interrogative clause as a title in Text 10, If I could be invisible for a day, then??!!; she explained that such patterns make the text more interesting, “I thought it’s different and attractive so people can read this text”. This shows the blog-writer’s attempt to communicate with her audience and draw them into the text to explore what she wrote. She added that she used a great deal of emoticon through which she could express her feelings better. The blog-writer’s textual self-expression, voice and stance will be dealt with in the following section.