Disagreements and Agreements in Personal/diary Blogs: A Closer Look at Responsiveness

Available online at www.sciencedirect.
com
Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1607–1622

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Disagreements and agreements in personal/diary blogs:

A closer look at responsiveness
Brook Bolander
University of Basel, Englisches Seminar, Nadelberg 6, CH-4051 Basel, Switzerland
Received 11 November 2011; received in revised form 2 March 2012; accepted 26 March 2012
Abstract
In this paper, I focus on responsiveness in 185 disagreements and 219 agreements in the comments sections of eight personal/diary
blogs. Since the message format of personal/diary blogs is such that responsiveness is not signalled by the system, interlocutors need to
make manifest to whom a disagreement or agreement is directed. Bloggers and readers are likely to make use of a variety of means of
signaling responsiveness, such as naming, format tying (Muntigl and Turnbull, 1998) and quoting. The are not likely to rely extensively on
quoting, as they might in modes in which quoting constitutes a built-in technological property. My analysis of disagreements and
agreements highlights that while responsiveness is integral to agreements and disagreements, it does not have to be made explicit in
personal/diary blog interactions. I argue that explicitness appears to be associated with the participation framework of blogs, such that
there is a greater need to signal responsiveness explicitly when readers address other readers, but a smaller need to signal
responsiveness explicitly when readers address bloggers. The paper thus demonstrates how particular social (participation framework)
and medium factors (message format and quoting) (Herring, 2007) are tied with the linguistic realisation of disagreements and agreements.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Disagreements; Agreements; Responsiveness; Participation framework; Blogs
1. Introduction
(1) Blog 1 – xenogere j a life in progress1

COMMENT 1 Jonathan, you are being a bit whiney aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be working?:-D (written by Lypython and
directed at Jonathan)
COMMENT 2 Im workin, workin my way to your desk for a smack down! (written by Jonathan and directed at Lypython)
COMMENT 3 *cough*bullshit*cough* (written by Lypython and directed at Jonathan)
Example (1), taken from the comments section of a personal/diary blog, shows three consecutive comments uttered by
two interlocutors, Jonathan and Lypython. The two are engaged in a lengthy dialogue, consisting of a total of
27 comments. The interaction is characterised by a strong presence of disagreements, defined as the voicing of an
incompatible viewpoint which is explicitly directed at another party (Baym, 1996). Yet the disagreements are not face-
threatening (Brown and Levinson, 1987), or dispreferred (Pomerantz, 1984), but rather sociable (Schiffrin, 1984). The
interaction is punctuated by instances of bonding humour (Hay, 2000; Schnurr, 2010), which creates and reinforces
solidarity and common ground. The example reminds us of an instance of verbal sparring or duelling, an image triggered
from the outset through the large grin in Comment I,:-D, which is then substantiated through the creative use and repetition
E-mail address: Brook.Bolander@unibas.ch.

1
I have been given permission to use the names of six of the eight blogs. All reader names are pseudonyms. Examples have been reproduced
exactly.
0378-2166/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.03.008
1608 B. Bolander / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1607–1622
of working in Comment II, and the spelling out of a physical enactment of teasing in face-to-face interaction – the couching
of a word, such as bullshit, within a cough. Reading the interaction as a researcher or a user, it becomes evident that the
two readers are directing their comments at one another. This is made manifest, for example, through naming (Jonathan,
Comment I); pronoun use (your, Comment II); the order of the comments, with Comments I, II and III appearing
consecutively; and ‘format tying’ (Muntigl and Turnbull, 1998:231) of Comments I and II via repetition of working, coupled
with the substitution of you in Comment I for I in Comment II. Besides the consecutive order, there is no further explicit
evidence, e.g., naming, pronoun use, etc. that Comment III is responsive to Comment II. From the content of the
exchange, however, it is evident that all three comments form part of a dialogue.
This paper, which is part of a larger project (Bolander, 2012), aims to contribute to this special issue on disagreements
by focusing on the following research question: How is responsiveness constructed in agreement and disagreement turns
in blogs? In order to answer this question, I will need to address the following three sub-questions: How often do we find
disagreements and agreements in personal/diary blogs? To whom are these disagreements and agreements directed?
How are they formulated? To explore these questions, I will draw on the results of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of
187 disagreements and 220 agreements taken from a corpus of eight personal/diary blogs. As a first step, I will define and
characterise (personal/diary) blogs (section 2). Secondly, I will define disagreements and agreements. After presenting
working definitions and an overview of social and medium factors (Herring, 2007) which are associated with
disagreements and agreements offline and online, I will focus on one social factor – participation framework (Goffman,
1981) – and two medium factors – message format and quoting. I will thereby demonstrate the potential relevance of these
factors for the present study (section 3). In sections 4 and 5, I will outline my material and method, and central results. In
the final section of the paper, I will summarise my findings and reflect upon their relevance for my research question
(section 6).
2. (Personal/diary) blogs
A review of the literature shows that personal/diary blogs are one of the three main types of blogs, along with filter
blogs and knowledge blogs. They are variously referred to as ‘‘personal journal’’ (Blood, 2002; Herring et al., 2004a),
‘‘diary-type blogs’’ (Herring et al., 2004a), and ‘‘online diaries’’ (Krishnamurthy, 2002:2). My use of the term personal/
diary blog reflects the use of both terms ‘personal’ and ‘diary’ in the literature. Personal/diary blogs are described as
constituting ‘‘a record of the blogger's thoughts: something noticed on the way to work, notes about the weekend, or a
quick reflection on some subject or another’’ (Blood, 2002:10). Central to this type of blog is the fact that it is written from
the point of view of the blogger, who writes about anything s/he wants to share with his/her readers. The personal
element is thus a defining characteristic of this type of blog. While personal/diary blogs are the most prominent sub-types
of blogs on the Internet (Blood, 2000, 2002; Herring et al., 2004a), they are generally underrepresented in discourses
about blogs and blogging (Herring et al., 2004b). This is one of the reasons why it is important to conduct research on
language use in personal/diary blogs. Further reasons will be addressed in section 3 in connection with my discussion of
disagreements and agreements.
Blogs are notoriously hard to define since there is widespread variation with regard to their social properties, i.e., the
aim, purpose, topic, size of blog, number of active participants, etc. Definitions of blogs thus tend to be based on their
technical properties. This is, for example, shown in Herring's (2007) definition of blogs presented in connection with her
faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse (CMD), an etic scheme listing social and medium factors
which have been associated with language use in CMD. Here, she describes five medium factors as ‘‘definitional
characteristics of the blog genre’’:
- asynchronicity [. . .];
- 1-way message transmission [. . .];
- persistence of messages in archives linked from the sidebar of the blog [. . .];
- Web-based delivery and a tendency for messages to be text only [. . .];
- and the display of blog entries in reverse chronological sequence with a ‘comment’ option below each entry [. . .].
(Herring, 2007)
As these characteristics indicate, bloggers and readers do not need to be online at the same time to write and receive
messages (asynchronicity); thus, there is typically a time lag between the production and reception of a message. Related
to this is 1-way message transmission, which refers to the fact that messages are written and received as wholes; they do
not appear on the screen of the recipient as the writer is composing them. Typically, messages, i.e., both bloggers’ posts
and blogger and readers’ comments, are persistent, in that they are stored in archives which can be accessed from a
sidebar on the main page of the blog. On the main page of the blog, we find blog posts. These are described as appearing
in reverse chronological order, since the newest post is at the top of the page, with older posts displayed below. Typically,
B. Bolander / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1607–1622 1609
blogs have a Comments option following posts, which means that individuals who have read a blog post can choose to
actively engage in an exchange with the blogger and/or other readers by writing one or several comments. These
comments are displayed in chronological order following a post.
All of these medium factors (Herring, 2007) have an impact on the language used in blogs. For this paper, the
presence of a Comments option and the display of messages are the most relevant. The comments section constitutes
a virtual space in which the blogger can interact with his/her readers and in which readers can engage in exchanges
with the blogger and with one another. In this sense, the comments section can be conceptualised as an invitation for
readers to actively participate in the blog, although many may clearly choose to remain passive (bystanders, cf.
Goffman, 1981; Maroccia, 2004). By writing a comment, the active reader co-constructs an interaction consisting of
two turns (post + comment), which may, but does not have to extend beyond the dyad of blogger–reader. In this way,
monologues become dialogues or polylogues (cf. Maroccia, 2004), and these dialogues or polylogues may be
constituted by agreement or disagreement exchanges. Since comments are displayed on the screen in the order
in which they are received by the system, i.e., with the oldest comment following the blog post and newer comments
displayed below, the order of appearance may not reflect emergent patterns of interaction. Only the first comment
which responds to a blog post will thus appear adjacent to the post, and comments which respond to other comments
(written by either the blogger or another reader) may well be spatially separated from one another. While other
modes of CMC, such as Usenet, have a built-in option for quoting (Herring, 2007; cf. also Baym, 1996), this
technological affordance is not part of the blog format of the eight blogs that form the corpus for this study.2 Clearly, this
does not preclude the option for manual quoting. However, it does make it more likely that interlocutors will rely on a
variety of means of marking responsiveness, such as naming, pronoun use, etc. as already demonstrated in Example
(1) above.
In addition to these five medium factors, there are two social factors which can be conceived of as ‘‘characteristic of
blog discourse in general’’: one-to-many participation structure and imbalanced participation structure (Herring, 2007). In
posts, a blogger (one) addresses his/her readership (many). However, in blogs with a Comments option, this trend can be
reversed. Both bloggers and readers can respond to posts and/or comments. Theoretically, the comments section can
entail one-to-one (reader to blogger, or blogger to reader), or one-to-many (reader to blogger and readers, reader to
readers, or blogger to readers) participation. Applied to disagreements and agreements, this means that it is potentially
possible for disagreements and agreements to be authored by the blogger or a reader and for them to be directed at the
blogger, a reader, or even a group of bloggers and readers. The multiple participation framework deserves research
attention and, as stated in the introduction, empirically assessing who dis/agreements are directed at within this
framework is a necessary step to appreciating how responsiveness is constructed.
3. Disagreements and agreements: applications of previous research to personal/diary blogs
Both medium and social factors – and here I draw on Herring's (2007) use of the terms in her faceted classification
scheme for CMD – influence the (co-)construction and interactional management of disagreements and agreements in
offline and online contexts. Although the research history of disagreements and agreements in computer-mediated
contexts is not yet extensive, since the mid 1990s, this has begun to change. In 1996, the first systematic study on
disagreements and agreements in a computer-mediated environment was published (Baym, 1996). In it, Baym
(1996:325) defines disagreements and agreements as entries which are ‘‘explicitly responsive’’, i.e., clearly directed at
a previous entry or message, and which entail the voicing of incompatible (disagreement) or compatible (agreement)
viewpoints. She focuses on these two moves in an asynchronous mode of CMC – Usenet – in which the message
format is such that messages appear on the screen in the order received by the system. Since personal/diary blogs
have the same message format, I will adopt her conceptualisation for my analysis of disagreements and agreements.
In this section, I will present an overview of social and medium factors that research on disagreements and agreements
offline and online has highlighted as important for both the presence/absence and linguistic realisation of these moves.
I will subsequently focus on the social factor of participation format and the medium factors of message format and
quoting, and illustrate why these are of particular relevance for the research questions raised in the introduction to this
paper.
Table 1 presents a list of social factors which can be associated with disagreements and agreements in offline and
online contexts (abbreviated to Off and On). Literature which not only explores disagreements, but also focuses on
agreements has been marked in italics.
2
Some blogs are starting to introduce a ‘quote’ and ‘reply’ option attached to each message. An individual wishing to respond to a particular
message can simply click on either of these two options, and hence quote the message or part of the message, or reply to it as a whole. In this
way, messages begin to be presented in connection with interactional patterns and less in the order in which they are received by the system.
Table 1
Social factors associated with disagreements and agreements (literature dealing with both disagreements and agreements is marked in italics) in
offline (Off) and online (On) contexts.
Social factor Off On Examples of relevant literature
Face and preference X Brown and Levinson (1987), Leech (1983), Pomerantz (1984), Yaeger-Dror (2002),
Muntigl and Turnbull (1998), Vuchinich (1990), Mulkay (1985)
X Baym (1996)
Frames and culture X Bilmes (1991), Schiffrin (1984), Grimshaw (1990), Tannen and Kakava (1992), Kotthoff (1993),
Georgakopoulou and Patrona (2000), Georgakopoulou (2001), Locher (2004),
Muntigl and Turnbull (1998)
X Baym (1996), DuVal Smith (1999), Graham (2007), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Participant relationships X Schiffrin (1984), Brown and Levinson (1987), Grimshaw (1990), Vuchinich (1990),
Rees-Miller (2000), Georgakopoulou (2001), Thornborrow (2007)
X Hert (1997), DuVal Smith (1999), Reid (1999), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Topic or theme X Mulkay (1985), Rees-Miller (2000), Kakava (2002), Locher (2004)
X Baym (1996), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Group purpose/goals X Tannen and Kakava (1992)
X Baym (1996), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Diversity of community/audience X Collins (1992), Baym (1996), Carnevale and Probst (1997), Hert (1997), DuVal Smith (1999),
Graham (2007)
Gender X Tannen (1986, 1990)
X Herring (1994, 1996a, 1996b), Herring et al. (1995)
Participation framework X Schiffrin (1984), Georgakopoulou and Patrona (2000)
X Baym (1996), Kleinke (2010)
While neither the factors, nor the literature presented in Table 1 are exhaustive, the review makes manifest that face and
preference, frames and culture, participant relationships, topic, or theme, group purpose/goals, diversity of community/
audience, gender and participation framework can all be associated with the presence/absence and linguistic realisation of
disagreements and agreements in both offline (face-to-face, written and mediated) and online (computer-mediated) settings.
For the current study, the social factor of participation framework is especially relevant. Participation framework has been
highlighted as an important factor in studies of disagreement and agreement offline (Schiffrin, 1984; Georgakopoulou and
Patrona, 2000) and online (Baym, 1996; Kleinke, 2010). Here, I draw on Goffman's (1981:137) use of the term to refer to ‘‘all of
the persons within the gathering’’, and specifically to the types of roles, or footings (Goffman, 1981) interlocutors cast
themselves and others into. Clearly, this can be linked to participant relationships, since by casting oneself and others into
particular roles, interlocutors engage in the construction of emergent relationships, or reinforce pre-existing ones. While I will
not discuss previous research on participant relationships here, in my analysis of the results in section 5.3, I will return to the
concept of sociable disagreement (Schiffrin, 1984) mentioned in the introduction to this paper. Of particular relevance for an
analysis of participation frameworks in personal/diary blogs are associations between the distribution of conversational
roles, rights and obligations, and the linguistic performance of disagreements and agreements, specifically issues
surrounding to whom they are addressed and how responsiveness is constructed.
While not based on a computer-mediated setting, Georgakopoulou and Patrona's (2000) research on mediated Greek
TV panel discussions is of interest for the current study. In their research, they highlight the role played by ‘‘the institutional
parameters that define the speech act of TV discussions’’, notably the fact that ‘‘the participant roles are demarcated a
priori in that interactants are readily identified as host and expert’’, a distribution which has implications for the turn-taking
system (hosts ask questions which are subsequently answered by experts) and the broader ‘‘conversational rights and
obligations’’ of the participants (Georgakopoulou and Patrona, 2000:325). Although not explicitly discussed, but rather
based on ‘‘tacit agreement’’, hosts control who speaks when, for how long and about what (Georgakopoulou and Patrona,
2000:325). Yet despite the importance of the host, the authors show that disagreements tend to be host-unmediated. They
are predominantly directed at other panellists, such that A interrupts B when B is responding to a question raised by the
host, or A directly asks B a question that indirectly triggers a disagreement; in such latter cases B assumes the role of the
interviewer (Georgakopoulou and Patrona, 2000:327–328). The study thus demonstrates how participants try to find a
means of distancing themselves from their obligations (responding to questions raised by hosts) in order to voice
disagreements with other participants (Georgakopoulou and Patrona, 2000:336), and calls for research on associations
between disagreements and ‘‘the local enactments of larger (and, at times, pre-allocated) participant roles, relations, and
identities’’ (Georgakopoulou and Patrona, 2000:337).
In personal/diary blog contexts, conversational rights and obligations are also established a priori, with bloggers having
more control over the blog's form and content relative to readers. Table 2 depicts central rights and obligations in personal/
diary blogs.
Table 2
Bloggers and readers conversational rights and obligations in personal/diary blogs.
Bloggers Readers
Rights Control over blog layout Write comments

Write posts Read posts
Edit posts Read comments
Read comments
Write comments
Moderate and delete comments
Obligations Write posts
As shown in Table 2, bloggers can edit their own posts, moderate and delete reader comments and control much of the
blog's layout. In addition, only bloggers have the right to write posts. However, both bloggers and readers can read and
write comments, and readers can read posts written by bloggers. Differences in obligations also concern the writing of
posts. Bloggers are obliged to write posts if they want to maintain their blogs and continue to attract readers. Readers,
however, have no obligations at all. They can, but do not have to, passively (read posts, read comments) or actively (read
posts, write comments) participate. Since the blogger's post constitutes the sole entry which needs to exist for subsequent
interaction of any form to ensue, it can be conceived of as the central entry type. In addition, and related to this point, the
meaning of the lexical item comments suggests a dependency on the post. Without a post a comment cannot exist; a
comment is, in other words, always responsive to another entry.
What we do not know a priori, however, is the degree to which comments always respond to a post, since both readers
and bloggers can respond to one another in the comments sections. This warrants empirical research, specifically
research on how many disagreements and agreements respond to a bloggers’ post relative to other comments, and what
this implies with regard to the participation framework and emergent forms of social practice. Related to this is the broader
question of how such disagreements and agreements are made responsive, and whether there are differences in forms of
responsiveness depending on the intended respondent of a dis/agreement.
The broader issue of how disagreements and agreements are made responsive is not only tied to questions of
participation framework and participant roles, but also to the medium factors of message format and quoting. These are
mentioned in Table 3, along with other relevant medium factors. Again, literature that focuses on both disagreements and
agreements is marked in italics.
Table 3
Medium factors associated with disagreements and agreements (literature dealing with both disagreements and agreements is marked in italics)
in online contexts.
Medium factor Examples of relevant literature
Anonymity Baym (1996), Carnevale and Probst (1997), Angouri and Tseliga (2010), Kleinke (2010)
Lack of social context cues Kiesler et al. (1984), Kiesler (1986), Sproull and Kiesler (1986), Collins, 1992, Baym (1996),
Carnevale and Probst (1997), Hert (1997), Graham (2007), Angouri and Tseliga (2010), Kleinke (2010)
Synchronicity Baym (1996), Carnevale and Probst (1997), Graham (2008), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Message format Baym (1996), Angouri and Tseliga (2010)
Persistence of transcript Hert (1997), Angouri and Tseliga (2010), Kleinke (2010)
Quoting Baym (1996), Hert (1997), Angouri and Tseliga (2010), Hodson-Champeon (2010)
While the literature listed in Table 3 is, like Table 2, not exhaustive, previous research on disagreements and agreements
in computer-mediated contexts has stressed the importance of anonymity, lack of social context cues, synchronicity,
message format, persistence of transcript and quoting for the emergence and realisation of disagreements and agreements.
Clearly, this does not mean that medium factors, i.e., (technological) characteristics of the setting, play no role offline. Yet one
of the central tasks in computer-mediated communication, since the inception of research in the early 1980s, has been to
assess the role played by a systems’ technological affordances for language use. In the beginning, scholars tended to over-
emphasise technological properties, which were seen as determining the linguistic outcome. Such computer-determinism
has, however, given way to studies which increasingly embrace the interdependent relationship between social and medium
factors and which focus on the emergence of language use in social practice (cf. Androutsopoulos, 2006 for a discussion of
the three waves of sociolinguistic research in CMC). By emphasising the relevance of the medium factors of message format
and quoting, I am by no means implying that they either outweigh the social factors mentioned in Table 1 above, nor that they
exist in an a-social vacuum and can thus be analysed without recourse to a systems’ social properties. This will become
apparent in section 5 when I present my results.
As stated already, responsiveness is inherent to defining disagreements and agreements (cf. also Sifianou, 2012).
In computer-mediated settings, this factor needs to be highlighted, because the message format of the majority of
computer-mediated environments is such that messages appear in the order in which they are received by the system,
and thus do not necessarily follow the message to which they are responding. We can see this in Example (2), which
consists of two comments: Comment I, which constitutes a disagreement voiced by the blogger and is the fourth in a
sequence of ten comments, and Comment II, which is a reader's response to this disagreement and is the tenth and final
comment in the sequence.
(2) Blog 2 – Diary of an Average Australian

COMMENT I Baron/Geoffrey Laine/Frank V Lenzmann/ whatever your latest alias is: The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) says: In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of the forthcoming
Fourth Assessment Report. According to this summary, the Fourth Assessment Report finds that human
actions are ‘‘very likely’’ the cause of global warming, meaning a 90% or greater probability. What
evidence would you like to present? Or are you siding with the only major scientific organisation to
disagree, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists? (Blog 2, comment written by blogger in
response to comment by reader, emphasis added)
[5 comments in between]
COMMENT II there are many respected bodies which disagree read this: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.
html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6andk=0 sadly, the whole debate is taking on a
religious overtone – those who dare to question junk science are pilloried. (Blog 2, comment written by
reader in response to comment by blogger, emphasis added)
In Comment I, the blogger responds to a prior claim made by the Baron, in which he states that humans are not
responsible for climate change. In his response in Comment II, the blogger puts forward a clearly incompatible position,
drawing on the IPCC report, and challenging the Baron to produce evidence to the contrary. Responsiveness is signalled
both through naming (Baron/Geoffrey Laine/Frank V Lenzmann) and through pronoun use (you). Comment II, the Baron's
response to the blogger, is separated from Comment I by five comments. In it, he disagrees with the blogger by drawing on
a report showing that there are indeed respected bodies who maintain that humans are not responsible for climate change
(cf. Richardson, 2003 on warranting strategies). While less explicitly responsive than Comment I, the Baron's comment (II)
is nonetheless tied to the blogger's. [T]he only major scientific organisation to disagree in Comment I becomes bound to
there are many respected bodies which disagree in Comment II via the link between organisation and bodies; the former
constitutes a hyponym of the latter. In addition, while not explicit, a pronoun is implicit in the imperative read this.
In computer-mediated environments where quoting exists as a technical option made available by the system, it is
likely that individuals will tend to signal responsiveness through quoting, more so than through naming, pro/noun use and
format tying (as in Example (2)). While the presence/absence of a built-in technological option does not mean that
interlocutors have to draw on it, it does ‘‘presumably make [it] more likely to occur’’ (Herring, 2007). This is demonstrated in
Baym's (1996) study of 51 disagreements and 70 agreements in a storyline taken from a Usenet newsgroup devoted to
soap operas. In Usenet, quoting exists as a technological affordance, a factor which is translated into social practice, as all
51 disagreements and 69/70 agreements were linked to the message to which they were responding through quoting.
Moreover, as messages remain persistent in Usenet (as they do in blogs) interlocutors could choose which specific part of
the message they wanted to quote. Turns ‘‘were [thus] usually edited down to the particular matter to which the post
responded’’ (Baym, 1996:325–326). This option does not exist in the eight blogs of this study. Hence, it is more likely that
‘‘manual’’ quoting will be one of many means through which interlocutors signal responsiveness.
4. Material and method
As stated in the introduction, the data used in this study are taken from a corpus of eight personal/diary blogs: Blog 1
(xenogere / a life in progress), Blog 2 (Diary of an Average Australian), Blog 3 (defective yeti), Blog 4 (Midlife – A Journey),
Blog 5 (anonymous), Blog 6 (PastaQueen), Blog 7 (Momma Mia, Mea Culpa – Too Lazy to Hide the Crazy), and Blog 8
(anonymous). These were selected through keyword searches on Google, Technorati and BlogCatalog and based on an
attempt to keep the following factors consistent for comparison: Gender (four blogs by men and four by women); age (all
bloggers are adults in their mid 20s to late 50s); language (all bloggers have a native command of English); national
context (all bloggers write in a country where English is an official language; two bloggers are in Australia and six in the
US). The majority of the eight blogs were launched between 2002 and 2006. In addition, all eight bloggers interact with
their readers in the comments sections.
The eight bloggers in the study write a varying number of posts per month. In April 2007 – the time period I focused
on – they authored between 20 (Blog 2 – Diary of an Average Australian – and Blog 3 – defective yeti) and 127
(Blog 5 – anonymous) posts. The topics they address in the 48 posts I analysed in more detail range strongly – an
unsurprising finding given that the blogs are of the personal/diary mode. The eight bloggers raise both topics which we might
prototypically associate with personal/diary blogs, such as posts about their daily lives, hobbies, family, friends, relationships
and work, as well as topics we might not expect, such as posts about their blogs and the social practice of blogging, the
Internet and language.3 Bloggers 5 and 6 strongly focus on personal weight loss journeys.
For ethical reasons, notably the difficulty of ascertaining whether personal/diary blogs are private in terms of content
although they may be publicly accessible (cf. Eysenbach and Till, 2001; Ess and the AoIR Ethics Working Committee,
2002), I asked the bloggers for permission to use their blogs as part of my study. I then sampled all the posts and
comments written in April 2007, a time period prior to my contacting the bloggers. In this way, I was able to tackle the
problem of the observer's paradox, yet still ask the bloggers for consent. Since my prime interest is in interactions in the
comments sections, I selected those six posts from each of the eight blogs which generated the greatest number of
comments. The sample thus consists of 48 posts and 841 comments (76,088 tokens), which were written by a total of 465
interlocutors,4 as shown in Table 4.
Table 4
Posts, comments and number of commenters in the personal/diary blog corpus.
Blog Posts Comments Nr. commenters
1 6 63 10
2 6 56 35
3 6 224 178
4 6 49 a 25
5 6 50 20
6 6 161 106
7 6 79 29
8 6 159 62
Total 48 841 465

a
Blog 4 had a total of 17 comments in April 2007. Since 50 comments were aimed at from each of the eight blogs, and examples of interactions
going beyond bloggers post + reader comment, I chose those two posts with their related sets of comments from March, April and May which
generated the most comments.
After having selected my data sample, I performed a close, bottom-up, qualitative analysis of the posts and
comments. Relevant to this paper was my coding of ‘entry types’, and of ‘disagreement’ and ‘agreement’. The two
main entry types are, as stated previously, blogger posts, and blogger and reader comments. While posts can only be
written by bloggers and are typically not responsive to a previous entry, comments can be written by bloggers or
readers, and they can respond to the post, a comment or comments, to the post and a comment simultaneously, or
to a different post altogether (e.g., one written at a previous point in time in the blog).5 When analysing the
841 comments, I thus tagged both a) who wrote the comment and b) to whom the comment was directed. In my
labelling of disagreements and agreements, I assessed ‘‘the kind of contribution that the entry made to the ongoing
exchange’’ (Miller and Gergen, 1998:192), defined by Locher (2006) as ‘discourse moves’. This was a necessary
approach, since there is evidently no form–function overlap; disagreements and agreements can be realised in
various ways.
In addition, I distributed a semi-structured questionnaire to the eight bloggers with 53 questions relating to their blogs,
their roles as bloggers, their relationships with readers and their views and reflections on language use, specifically
disagreements and agreements. Six of the eight bloggers returned the questionnaire. Where relevant to the discussion at
hand, I will draw on select results from the questionnaire to complement my findings from the qualitative and quantitative
analysis of the personal/diary blog corpus.
3
Although we might not expect personal/diary bloggers to also focus on topics like the social practice of blogging, the Internet and language
use, the bloggers write about such themes in connection with their own personal experiences and opinions. The personal element characteristic
of personal/diary blogs is thus prevalent in the discussion of such topics as well.
4
Clearly, it is difficult to know how many unique individuals participate in the comments sections of blogs. This is especially the case if we
consider that we cannot, for example, know how many unique interlocutors author comments marked as anonymous. My claim that there are 465
interlocutors who participate in the comments sections is based on the use of names. In addition to the 463 names used in the comments sections,
there were four comments authored by anonymous interlocutors in Blog 6. Since the context made it obvious that these anonymous authors are
two different individuals, they were also added to the overall tally.
5
In the total corpus, there was only one spam comment and 11 ambiguous comments. These are not treated in this paper.
5. Results: disagreements and agreements in the personal/diary blog corpus
In this section, I will present the results from the analysis of the 220 agreements and 187 disagreements. To start out
with, I will briefly contextualise the analysis of these discourse moves within the broader context of language use in the
personal/diary blog corpus (section 5.1). Subsequently, I will explore who the dis/agreements are authored by and to
whom they are directed (section 5.2). Once these issues have been addressed, I will be able to turn to the central research
question raised in this paper and discuss how responsiveness is linguistically constructed in disagreements and
agreements (section 5.3).
5.1. Language use, agreements and disagreements in posts and comments
As stated in section 4, the corpus used in this paper consists of 48 posts and 841 comments. The coding process showed
that bloggers and readers perform a variety of discourse moves when they write posts (bloggers) and comments (bloggers
and readers), i.e., they make different contributions to the emerging interaction. In total, I identified 31 such moves in posts
and comments. These occurred 2294 times in the corpus; 409 (18%) times in posts and 1885 (82%) in comments. Central
acts performed by bloggers and readers include the seeking and provision of information (which includes answers to
questions and the sharing of one's own experience or viewpoint), the paying of compliments (mostly directed at the blogger),
the voicing of thanks (predominantly directed at the blogger, or voiced by the blogger in instances where s/he thanks his/her
readers for their participation or contribution in the blogs’ comments sections), the use of metacomments to structure posts,
and the acts of disagreeing and agreeing. The final two acts were amongst the six most frequently occurring in the corpus and
account for 8% (disagreements) and 10% (agreements) of the total discourse moves in the data. They occur almost solely in
comments; there were only two disagreements and one agreement in posts. This result is not surprising. While a blogger can
talk about, even reproduce (using imitations of direct speech, for example), a disagreement or agreement exchange, the fact
that disagreements and agreements emerge through dialogues means that they will predominantly occur in comments
sections. In comments sections, a reader can voice a compatible or incompatible viewpoint with a claim previously made by
the blogger in his/her post; alternately, an issue raised by the blogger or a reader in a comment can subsequently be taken up
by the blogger or a reader in a further comment. In the following discussion of my results, I will focus on the 219 agreements
and 185 disagreements in the comments sections.
5.2. Entry types, disagreements and agreements
A close analysis of the comments sections showed that agreements and disagreements are embedded in seven
different types of comments. Frequencies for these seven types are shown in Table 5.
Table 5
Entry types: agreements and disagreements (results presented in percentages).
Entry type Agreements (N = 219) Disagreements (N = 187) a
by reader in response to blogger post 58 42

by reader in response to blogger post and comment 16 11
by reader in response to comment by blogger 5 7
by reader in response to comment by reader 3 16
by reader ambiguous comment 1
by reader in response to different blogger post 1 1
by blogger in response to comment by reader 17 22
Total 100 100
a
Although there was a total of 185 disagreements in comments, the total for disagreement entry types is higher. As shown in this table,
disagreements come to 187. This is a result of the fact that there are two instances in which a reader's disagreement responds to both a previous
comment written by the blogger as well as to one written by the reader.
A look at Table 5 shows that the majority of comments containing an agreement or a disagreement are reader
responses to posts, although frequencies are somewhat higher for agreements (58%) than for disagreements (42%).
These results can be interpreted in light of the blogs’ participation frameworks and the blogger's central role as author of
posts. His/her role as the author of posts suggests that s/he has a privileged position in interaction with the majority of
comments being directed at him/her. This claim can be made for seven of the eight bloggers; the situation in Blog 1 is an
exception and is discussed in section 5.3 below. These frequencies suggest that bloggers can potentially be conceived of
as ‘‘favoured recipient[s]’’ (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1990:90, as quoted in Maroccia, 2004:142), i.e., as
a) the main addressee when a message, i.e., a comment in the case of blogs, is not explicitly directed at anyone, and
b) a ratified recipient when a comment is explicitly directed at another party, i.e., at a blogger or reader (Maroccia, 2004:142).
In section 5.3 below, I will refer back to this concept of ‘‘favoured recipient’’.
The results also show that part of the bloggers’ role entails responding to comments written by readers. This is
demonstrated by the fact that the second most frequently occurring entry type in which agreements (17%) and
disagreements (22%) are embedded, are comments in which bloggers respond to their readers. A close look at the eight
blogs, and at the questionnaire results in which the bloggers talk about their practice of responding to reader comments
shows that half of the bloggers (Bloggers 1, 4, 7 and 8) regularly respond to reader comments, whereas the other half
(Bloggers 2, 3, 5 and 6) respond to reader comments only sporadically. The tendency to respond appears to be motivated
by the bloggers’ own perception of their role as bloggers. This is evidenced by the questionnaire data, and shown in (3), (4)
and (5), Blogger 1, 4 and 8s responses to why they interact with readers in the comments sections.
(3) Its a discussion. If a reader says something about what I post, I feel as a good host I should respond to their
remarks. (Questionnaire data, response Blogger 1)
(4) It helped build the community and I think was one reason people kept coming back. (Questionnaire data,
response Blogger 4)
(5) I like to let my readers know that I do care about their comments. (Questionnaire data, response Blogger 8)
As shown in Examples (3), (4) and (5), considerations about what it means to be a good host (Blogger 1), a community
builder (Blogger 4) or a blogger who cares about her readers (Blogger 8) are intricately tied with these bloggers’ decisions
to regularly respond to their readers. For Blogger 7, enjoyment stands in the forefront; she interacts with her readers
because its [sic] fun.
Bloggers 2 and 6, on the other hand, report that they tend to respond only when they are challenged and can learn from
their readers (6), or are specifically asked a question or prompted to think as a result of a reader comment (7).
(6) I enjoy seeing my views challenged, and learning from others views. (Questionnaire data, response Blogger 2)
(7) I usually interact if someone has asked a question or if they’ve raised a point that makes me think of
something Id like to share. (Questionnaire data, response Blogger 6)
As the questionnaire responses in (6) and (7) show, for Bloggers 2 and 6 the practice of engaging in interactions with
readers is not coupled with a perception that this is an intrinsic part of their role. In Blogs 2 and 6, the corpus shows
evidence that the bloggers tend to respond to questions, (un)solicited advice imparted by readers and disagreement turns,
but not, or less, to other types of moves. The same claim can be made for Bloggers 3 and 5, for whom I lack questionnaire
results. Blogger 3, for example, only responds to a reader on one occasion, and his response is prompted by a reader's
disagreement with his post. Blogger 5, while responding to her readers more than Blogger 3, also tends to respond to
these types of discourse moves more than to others.
Thus, while the blogger can be considered the overall central recipient, part of his/her role entails responding to his/her
readers. This role is directly coupled with speakership in the case of Blogs 1, 4, 7 and 8, since those interlocutors who take
up or acknowledge their right to speakership, i.e., their right to write a comment, are responded to by the blogger. In Blogs
2, 3, 5 and 6, this is not the case, since only select comments are responded to. Often bloggers respond to disagreements
raised by readers by voicing a disagreement themselves, a factor which explains why 22% of disagreements are
embedded in bloggers’ responses to reader comments compared with 17% for agreements.
5.3. Responsiveness in disagreements and agreements
A look at the way disagreements and agreements are tied to previous claims to which they are responding can also be
associated with the participation framework, as well as with the message format and with the absence of the technical
affordance of quoting. In order to assess responsiveness, I performed a qualitative, bottom-up analysis of the 219
agreements and 185 disagreements in the comments sections, and thereby systematically labelled how responsiveness
is linguistically marked. This process showed that there are six ways in which responsiveness is signalled in comments in
which a blogger/reader dis/agrees with another party: ‘Quoting’, ‘naming’, ‘pro/noun use’, ‘format tying’, ‘inside other
discourse move clues’ and ‘order and participant roles’.
‘Naming’ and ‘quoting’ can be considered the most explicit means in which responsiveness is linguistically marked.
Naming refers to instances where a speaker refers to another by name (as shown in (8)). Quoting refers to manual quoting
and is defined as the use of quotes taken from the post or a previous comment. These are marked as quotes through
quotation marks, italics or layout, i.e., the setting apart of the quote from the part which responds to it. This is shown in (9),
a single comment which I have divided into two parts; Part I shows what the reader is quoting, and Part II her response to
the quote.
(8) Blog 6 – PastaQueen

anonymous – [. . .] I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a ‘‘different’’ person per se, just more myself, like I had
my amp turned up to 11. (Blog 6, comment written by blogger in response to reader comment, emphasis added)
(9) Blog 3 – defective yeti
Part I My husband likes to converse while listening to music through his earphones. Does anyone else think this is
rude?
Part II Absolutely. It's just common courtesy to take out the earphones. (Same goes for when you reach the cashier in a
shop) (Blog 3, comment written by reader in response to reader comment)
In (8), the blogger refers to the reader she is responding to by name – anonymous, and in (9) the quote in Part I is set apart
from the response in Part II. It is thus the layout which signals that Part I constitutes a quote.
‘Pro/noun use’ and ‘format tying’ tend to be less explicit forms of signalling responsiveness when compared with
‘naming’ and ‘quoting’. ‘Pronoun use’ refers to the use of either pronouns (e.g., you) or nouns and noun phrases (e.g.,
other commenters, the person who said X, etc.). In instances where an interlocutor uses the pronoun you (and I will return
to this point later on in this section), it is potentially ambiguous to whom s/he is directing the comment. ‘Format tying’ is
defined as instances in which the speaker ‘‘produces an utterance that is connected or ‘tied’ by means of semantic,
syntactic, morphemic, or phonological operations to [the] previous speaker's utterance’’ (Muntigl and Turnbull,
1998:231).6 It also has the propensity to be more implicit than ‘naming’ and ‘quoting’, since it can be subtle and involve the
tying of single lexical items, such as organisation and bodies, as shown in Example (2) (section 3). Example (10) is an
instance of pronoun use. (11) depicts an example of format tying, in which a reader (READER COMMENT) responds to
the blogger (BLOGGER COMMENT).

Lulu, etc., is great, but if a major publisher picks this up, you’re probably looking at a $40-50K advance. This would
definitely be a front-table impulse item. (Blog 3, comment written by reader in response to blogger post, emphasis
added)
BLOGGER COMMENT
anonymous – [. . .] I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a ‘‘different’’ person per se, just more myself, like I had my
amp turned up to 11. (Blog 6, comment written by blogger in response to reader comment, emphasis added)
READER COMMENT
I agree that I feel more myself, like Melanie turned to 11. But that is still different. (Blog 6, comment written by readers
in response to blogger comment, emphasis added)
The pronoun you in (10) serves to show that the reader is responding to the blogger; the context of the exchange makes
manifest that the pronoun is not intended generically. In (11), Melanie signals that she is responding to the blogger through
the syntactic and semantic tying of her claim like Melanie turned to 11 with the blogger's like I had my amp turned up to 11.
The final two means in which responsiveness is linguistically constructed are ‘inside other discourse move clues’ and
‘order and participant roles’. ‘Inside other discourse move clues’ refer to cases where responsiveness is not signalled in
the dis/agreement move itself, but inside other discourse moves, particularly ones that precede the dis/agreement. An
Example is shown in (12).
(12) Blog 8 – anonymous

Gwyneth: Thanks for the info.
I’ll remove them too. (Blog 8, comment written by blogger in response to reader comment)
In (12), the naming of the blogger's addressee, Gwyneth, occurs prior to her expression of thanks. The naming is thus
attached to the discourse move of ‘thanking’ and not to the ‘agreement’ which follows (I’ll remove them too). Theoretically it
would be possible for the first discourse move of ‘thanking’ to constitute a response to Gwyneth, and for the second
discourse move of ‘agreement’ to be responding to a different reader, someone who has previously suggested the blogger
6
Although I am referring to format tying within text-based computer-mediated communication, individuals can make use of paralinguistic
features, such as capitalisation or the repetition of sounds to signal responsiveness. In this sense, format tying can potentially resemble features
on a phonological level, too.
remove something from her site. A close reading of the interaction makes it evident that the agreement is also directed at
Gwyneth, despite the fact that the main marker of responsiveness, the naming, actually occurs prior to this discourse
move. Although the responsiveness marker of naming is explicit, ‘inside other discourse move clues’ are treated as more
implicit forms of responsiveness marking than ‘naming’, ‘quoting’, ‘pro/noun use’ and ‘format tying’, since a) they do not
occur within the dis/agreement itself, and b) it is possible for the type of responsiveness preceding or following the dis/
agreement to be less explicit than naming, e.g., to constitute ‘format tying’ or ‘pro/noun use’. Methodologically, such
examples draw our attention to the importance of looking at whole comments and at the broader interactional context even
when our analytical attention is directed at a specific discourse move. This is an important finding, which deserves to be
researched further.
The final responsiveness type, ‘order and participant roles’ is more strongly content related than the other types of
responsiveness, in that it is almost solely on the basis of a close reading of the comment in question as well as preceding
and following comments written by the blogger and/or readers that we can determine whether interlocutors are
constructing an emergent interaction, i.e., responding to one another, as opposed to merely stating their own opinion
without acknowledging the opinion held by others. I have defined ‘order and participant roles’ as (a) cases where the order
of comments is the main signal that a comment is responding to a post (first comment in a comments section) or to a
previously written comment and (b) instances where the conversational dominance of a party (predominantly the blogger,
but also readers, notably in Blog 1) makes it evident that the comment is responsive to that particular party, although there
are no explicit markers of responsiveness. The need to explicitly mark responsiveness tends to be alleviated in contexts
where comments follow on from one another consecutively. This is because the roles of the interactants as speakers and
hearers, particularly in situations where exchanges are three turns or more, have been established. For this reason, ‘order’
and ‘participant roles’ are grouped together. An example is shown in (13), which depicts two reader comments (marked as
READER I COMMENT and READER II COMMENT, presented in Example (1)).
(13) Blog 1 – xenogere / a life in progress

READER I COMMENT
Im workin, workin my way to your desk for a smack down! (Blog 1, comment written by reader in response
to reader comment)
READER II COMMENT
*cough*bullshit*cough* (Blog 1, comment written by reader in response to reader comment)
There is no explicit marking of responsiveness in Reader II's comment in (13). Yet it follows Reader I's comment in the
comments section, and occurs in a context where the two interlocutors have become favoured recipients. I will return to
this example in more detail later on in this section.
Overall there were 233 markers of responsiveness in the 219 agreements and 185 in the 185 disagreements. The fact
that there are more markers of responsiveness in agreement turns compared with the total number of agreements is
because there are instances in which an interlocutor agrees with more than one party within the same discourse move, but
does so in different ways. Although interlocutors often make use of more than one type of responsiveness marker in both
disagreements and agreements, I have coded conservatively and for each contribution noted the most explicit form of
responsiveness an interlocutor makes use of. The more implicit types only feature where explicit forms are lacking.
Frequencies for the markers of responsiveness are presented in Table 6 and ordered in terms of frequency of appearance
in agreements.
Table 6
Markers of responsiveness in agreements and disagreements (ordered in terms of frequency of appearance in agreements and presented in
percentages).
Types of responsiveness Markers (N = 233) in agreements (N = 219) Markers (N = 185) in disagreements (N = 185)
Pro/noun 39 35
Inside other discourse move clues 21 18
Order and participant roles 18 22
Naming 12 12
Format tying 9 8
Quoting 4 6
Total 101 100
As indicated by the frequencies in Table 6, interlocutors make use of both more and less explicit means of indicating to
whom a disagreement or agreement is directed. The only difference in order between the strategies in agreements and
disagreements concerns ‘inside other discourse move clues’ and ‘order and participant roles’. Whereas the former occur
slightly more frequently in agreements, the latter occur more frequently in disagreements. I will turn to ‘order and
participant roles’ more fully in connection with my discussion of the sociable disagreement exchange in Blog 1 below. The
reason ‘inside other discourse move clues’ are associated with agreements more than with disagreements is because
there are more instances in which other discourse moves, notably compliments, co-occur with agreements, and where
responsiveness is thus marked in the other discourse move, and not within the agreement turn. An example is shown in
(14), a comment written by a reader in response to the blogger's post. The blogger's post centres on the topic of weight
loss, particularly the question of whether she considers herself a binge eater, and in it she provides reasons why she is
unsure how she should label herself. The reader then takes up this subject matter. Her comment contains two agreements
and a compliment. I have marked these discourse moves in diamond brackets and divided the comment into three parts:

Part I <agreement> Yes! Yes! This is me to a tee! I have been wondering the exact same thing, down the point of
where I am considering getting myself evaluated. [. . .] </agreement>
Part II <agreement> My thing is also I have to eat food if I know it is there. I have food in the fridge for lunch, it would be
all ready and would only need heating up and then I would go and chow it down by 10 a.m. Ah well, something
else to work on. </agreement>
Part III <complimentOther> Keep up the good work, you are doing a great job! </complimentOther> (Blog 6, comment
written by reader in response to blogger post, emphasis added)
In part I in Example (14), it becomes apparent that the reader is agreeing with someone. This is marked explicitly on a lexical
level through the repeated use of the agreement marker yes, the prepositional phrase to a tee and the adjective phrase the
exact same which pre-modifies thing, and paralinguistically through the exclamation marks. What we do not yet know,
however, is what constitutes the agreement, i.e., what this turn is compatible with, and to whom the comment is directed.
While Part II provides hints that the subject matter of the agreement is food, it is Part III which is illustrative. The paying of the
compliment is illuminating, since it is obvious from the broader context that the you can only refer to the blogger. Once we
know that the you refers to the blogger, it becomes evident that the two agreement moves are also responsive to the blogger.
As shown in Table 6, ‘pro/noun’ is the most frequently used strategy in agreements and disagreements. Both ‘naming’
and ‘quoting’ feature less prominently. The paucity of quoting is not surprising, since quoting does not exist as a
technological affordance in the personal/diary blogs of the corpus. The dominance of pronouns is interesting in light of
their potential ambiguity, and suggests that they are not perceived of as ambiguous by those who use them. In the majority
of cases, they are voiced by readers and directed at bloggers, or at readers who have become favoured recipients.
Situations where readers address both the blogger as well as another reader provide empirical evidence for this claim
(Examples (15) and (16)). The first of these examples entails a pronoun, your, in a comment written by a reader in
response to the post and a previous reader comment, and a name, Liam. The second contains a name in the first chunk of
a comment written by a reader in response to the post and a previous reader comment, p, and an implicit pronoun, you, in
the second part of the same comment.

your is definitely better organized and informative;
And, Liam, I really don’t get how this is a non-story since it further reveals how this administration operates and
demonstrates once again the way in which they hide and dismiss – and they’re finally paying the price for these
things. To me this shows the American people yet another example of why this admin is so reviled and how they’ve
been bad for the country and discourse. But that's just how I see it. (Blog 3, comment written by reader in response
to blogger post and reader comment, emphasis added)

I agree with p–
try a day or two with no carbs. That's what I had to do just two days ago, when I had a sudden mysterious 3.5 lb
overnight weight gain. [. . .] (Blog 6, comment written by reader in response to blogger post and reader comment,
emphasis added)
In Example (15), a reader compliments the blogger for the quality of a summary he has written about the US attorney scandal,
before going on to disagree with a claim previously made by Liam (not shown in (15)) that this is a non-story. In the first part of
the comment, a compliment directed at the blogger (‘inside other discourse move clues’), the reader uses a pronoun to signal
responsiveness. In the second, naming (Liam) is the most explicit marker of responsiveness and signals that the comment is
directed at the reader. The comment also entails format tying (compare the reader's claim I really don’t get how this is a non-
story with Liam's original claim this is a non-story). Analogously, in Example (16), an agreement with a prior claim made by a
reader is marked as responsive through naming, whereas the part of the comment directed at the blogger is less explicit; it
contains only an implicit pronoun couched in the imperative unsolicited advice move (try a day or two with no carbs).
Whereas pronouns often mark responsiveness in disagreements and agreements directed at bloggers, naming is
more regularly used by readers, or by bloggers in responses to readers, i.e., in situations in which the blogger needs to
signal to which of the many readers a specific comment is directed. Thus, in (17), for example, the blogger uses the
reader's name – Vanessa – to show that in this specific instance she is agreeing with Vanessa's previous positive
assessment of her new grandson and not with that of another reader, who has also complimented her new grandson.
(17) Blog 8 – anonymous

Vanessa: yes he is:-) (Blog 8, comment written by blogger in response to reader comment, emphasis added)
While responsiveness in comments or parts of comments directed at the blogger does not always have to be implicit,
overall we can claim that responsiveness tends to be marked more explicitly in instances where readers respond to other
readers, or where bloggers respond to readers. The decreased need to mark comments – and by extension
disagreements and agreements voiced within these comments – as explicitly responsive when they are directed at the
blogger is likely a function of his/her status as the favoured and hence default recipient. This is linked to his/her control
over the form and content of the blog, which is, in turn, tied to the fact that posts are central entry types which can stand
alone, and that issues which are raised by the blogger in his/her posts tend to be taken up by readers in the comments
sections. In this sense, a blogger's post can be seen as analogous to the first slot following the exchange of greetings in
telephone conversations, which, too, is privileged relative to later slots as ‘‘it is the only one that is likely to be almost
entirely free from topical constraints arising from prior turns’’ (Levinson, 1983:313).
While the majority of reader disagreements and agreements are directed at bloggers (cf. Table 5 in section 5.2), Blog 1
constitutes an exception. The exceptional status of Blog 1 is associated with the lengthy sociable disagreement exchange
between two readers – Jonathan and Lypython – referred to in the introduction to this paper. What is particularly interesting
about the exchange is that it makes manifest that the role of the favoured recipient can emerge in interaction – a role which
has implications for the way recipiency is signalled – and that this role can be associated with the offline lives of
interlocutors. To discuss these points, I will look at the first ten turns of the sociable disagreement exchange (Example (18)
in more detail (Table 7).
Table 7
Example (18) of a sociable disagreement exchange from Blog 1 – xenogere / a life in progress.
Nr. Author/recipient Turn
1 Written by Jonathan; directed at Jason Man, I feel like i was just dumped.
2 Written by Lypython; directed at Jonathan Jonathan, you are being a bit whiney aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be working?:-D
3 Written by Jonathan; directed at Lypython Im workin, workin my way to your desk for a smack down!
4 Written by Lypython; directed at Jonathan *cough*bullshit*cough*
5 Written by Jonathan; directed at Lypython uh. . ..who was just smacked on the back of the head. . .YOU. . .by who. . .ME. . ..that
would mean it wasnt bullshit.
6 Written by Lypython; directed at Jonathan it's about time you stop being lazy
7a Written by Jonathan; directed at Lypython Uh, who is the one with the coushy job who hides in the back corner. . .YOU. Therefore,
you would be the lazy one. Thanks for playing though, LOVE YOUR SHOW!
7b Written by Jonathan; directed at (Sorry were [sic] hijacking your BLOG comments Jason)
Jason and Lypython
8a Written by Lypython; directed at yep, that's me, back here not doing a DAMN thing. (except making sure that you have
Jonathan plenty of orders going your way.)
8b Written by Lypython; directed at and Jason, he's lying, he's not sorry. . . I know i’m not. we have to keep the dust out of
Jason and Jonathan here somehow. . .:mrgreen:
9 Written by Jonathan; directed at Ok maybe a little white lie. . .. I could go over to LYPYTHON'S desk and say all of this
Lypython and Jason directly to him, or over IM, but we both feel we have to keep your readers entertained
while you do this ‘‘Work’’ thing.
10 Written by Lypython; directed at yep, these are the things we will sacrifice to keep you entertained
Jonathan and Jason
The exchange contains examples of ‘naming’, ‘pronoun use’ and ‘format tying’; in addition ‘order and participant roles’
show to whom turns are directed; explicit linguistic evidence for these strategies has been marked in italics in the right-
hand column in which the turns are presented. Comment numbers are included in the left-hand column, and information
about the author and recipient in the middle column. The information about author and recipient is simplified to ease
reader friendliness. Central points concerning recipient roles will be raised in the subsequent discussion of the example.
Jonathan and Lypython are pseudonyms; Jason is the name of the blogger.
As the italics highlight, responsiveness is made explicit through multiple use of pronouns (for example, you), noun phrases
(for example, your readers), naming (Jason) and format tying (for example, Shouldn’t you be working? and Im workin).
Pronouns are also heavily used in the rest of the exchange which totals 27 comments in all (not shown in Example (18)).
The exchange can be classified as sociable. This already becomes apparent in Comment 2, where Lypython's
negative assessment of Jonathan as whiney is accompanied by a large grin,:-D. The use of the emoticon signals that he is
teasing Jonathan, and its scope extends over the entire exchange. Throughout the interaction, we find further evidence for
this type of bonding humour (cf. Hay, 2000; Schnurr, 2010), and for the ‘‘playful enactment’’ of the disagreement turns
(Schiffrin, 1984:331), for example, the juxtaposition of two different senses of workin in Comment 3 (physical/intellectual
labour, on the one hand, and physical movement, on the other hand); the spelling out of the teasing move in
*cough*bullshit*cough* in Comment 4; and the use of the :mrgreen: emoticon (a wide-toothed smiley image which is
coloured green) in Comment 8b, an indication of sarcasm which further underlines that the exchange is not serious.
Moreover, in Comments 9 and 10, which can be classified as agreements, the two readers refer to their roles as
entertainers in Jason's blog, thereby ‘‘highlight[ing] similarities’’ (Hay, 2000:719) between them and creating common
ground (Schnurr, 2010:311). Finally, the use of hyperbole, lexicalised through the reference to the hijacking of Jason's
comments section (Comment 7b) and the sacrifice Lypython and Jonathan are willing to make for him and his other
readers (Comment 10), also contribute to the creation of a playful atmosphere.
Although there are select examples in the corpus of disagreement and agreement (or other exchanges) which go
beyond the relatively typical pattern of (1) post, (2) comment written by a reader in response to the post, and in the case of
Blogs 1, 4, 7 and 8, (3) comment written by blogger in response to reader comment, this is the only instance in the corpus
in which two readers engage in an exchange which goes beyond four turns, and in which they thereby cast one another
into the roles of favoured recipients. This suggests that although roles are predominantly established a priori, with the
blogger taking on the central role and being the party to whom the majority of comments are directed, it is possible for a
different participation framework to emerge in interaction. It may well be the case that this alteration in participation
framework results from the participant relationships inherent in Blog 1. Not only does the blogger know between 25 and
50% of his readers personally (a fact he communicated in the questionnaire),7 he personally knows Lypython (with whom
he has a close relationship and to whom he may well be related); it is unclear whether he personally knows Jonathan,
although the tone of the interaction suggests familiarity. In addition, Lypython and Jonathan clearly know one another from
their offline lives. This is made explicit in Example (18) above, where the two refer to a common work place and claim that
they could also have had this conversation in person or over IM (Instant Messaging). The offline lives of such interlocutors
can thus become closely connected with the nature of online performances, and thereby enable a re-distribution of the
roles, as evidenced through the variation in the construction of responsiveness.
As the frequencies and examples discussed in this section show, interlocutors make use of a variety of strategies –
some more, some less explicit – when disagreeing and agreeing with one another. Which strategies they select appear to
be coupled with existing and emerging participant roles and the participation framework of personal/diary blogs. The fact
that responsiveness can become associated with these roles suggests that agreements and disagreements do not need
to be ‘‘explicitly responsive’’ (Baym, 1996:335) in personal/diary blogs, the way they are in the Usenet interactions
discussed by Baym. Instead, I propose that disagreements and agreements should be defined as discourse moves which
can be implicitly or explicitly responsive. Implicit responsiveness emerges as a possibility by virtue of participant roles.
Explicit responsiveness can be signalled within the dis/agreement, or in different contributions interlocutors make
preceding or following the disagreement or agreement.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I set out to address how responsiveness is constructed in agreement and disagreement turns in personal/
diary blogs. My paper was based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 185 disagreements and 219 agreements
which surfaced in the comments sections of eight, English-language, personal/diary blogs. I approached the subject
matter of responsiveness from two angles: from the social factor of participation framework and the medium factors of
message format and quoting. My original interest in this topic was derived from the fact that the message format of blogs,
as in the majority of computer-mediated environments, is such that messages are presented on the screen in the order in
which they are received by the system. Since this often means that messages which respond to one another are spatially
separated from one another, interlocutors need to signal responsiveness through language use. The eight blogs of this
study have no built-in technological affordance which enables readers to readily quote claims they wish to agree or
disagree with. I therefore assumed that they would rely on a variety of means of signalling responsiveness, such as
naming, format tying, use of pronouns or noun phrases, etc.
7
All of the other bloggers, save for Blogger 7, state that they know between 0 and 25% of their readers personally.
The results from my analysis show that a large proportion of disagreements, and particularly agreements are authored
by readers and respond to the bloggers’ posts. In coding the various entry types, I also began to realise that interlocutors
mark messages in which they respond to readers more explicitly than those in which they respond to bloggers. These
tendencies prevail for seven of the eight blogs. In Blog 1, on the other hand, there is a lengthy exchange between two
readers, in which they more explicitly address the blogger (e.g., through naming) and more implicitly address one another
(e.g., relying on pronouns, the order of comments and the participant roles they have established). The study thus draws
attention to the importance of looking closely at participant roles and relationships in connection with disagreement and
agreement turns. More broadly, it highlights that there is an association between the wider participation framework of
personal/diary blogs and the a priori and emergent distribution of participant roles, and the linguistic construction of
responsiveness in disagreements and agreements. Further research should look more closely at the interplay between
explicit and implicit means of marking responsiveness within a discourse move or series of moves. In addition, it would be
interesting to conduct comparative research on other modes of CMD with similar participation frameworks and technical
properties.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Daniel Alcón for his help and patience in designing the program used for the quantitative analysis of
the personal/diary blog corpus. I would also like to thank the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers for
their constructive feedback and close reading of the paper. Last, but not least, I would like to thank the eight bloggers for
allowing me to use their blogs for my study: Blog 1 (xenogere/a life in progress), Blog 2 (Diary of an Average Australian),
Blog 3 (defective yeti), Blog 4 (Midlife – A Journey), Blog 5 (anonymous), Blog 6 (PastaQueen), Blog 7 (Momma Mia, Mea
Culpa – Too Lazy to Hide the Crazy) and Blog 8 (anonymous). It is greatly appreciated. All remaining faults are my own.
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Brook Bolander is an assistant for English Linguistics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her research interests are computer-mediated
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Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1607–1622

Disagreements and agreements in personal/diary blogs:

Keywords: Disagreements; Agreements; Responsiveness; Participation framework; Blogs

(1) Blog 1 – xenogere j a life in progress1

E-mail address: Brook.Bolander@unibas.ch.

3. Disagreements and agreements: applications of previous research to personal/diary blogs

Social factor Off On Examples of relevant literature

Rights Control over blog layout Write comments

Medium factor Examples of relevant literature

(2) Blog 2 – Diary of an Average Australian

4. Material and method

Blog Posts Comments Nr. commenters

Total 48 841 465

5. Results: disagreements and agreements in the personal/diary blog corpus

5.1. Language use, agreements and disagreements in posts and comments

5.2. Entry types, disagreements and agreements

Entry type Agreements (N = 219) Disagreements (N = 187) a

by reader in response to blogger post 58 42

5.3. Responsiveness in disagreements and agreements

(8) Blog 6 – PastaQueen

(10) Blog 3 – defective yeti

(12) Blog 8 – anonymous

(13) Blog 1 – xenogere / a life in progress

Total 101 100

(14) Blog 6 – PastaQueen

(15) Blog 3 – defective yeti

(16) Blog 6 – PastaQueen

(17) Blog 8 – anonymous

Nr. Author/recipient Turn

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