Blogs and wikis have not been with us for long, but have made a huge impact on society. Wikipedia is the best known exemplar of the wiki, a collaborative site that leads to a single text claimed by no-one; blogs, or web-logs, have exploded into the mainstream through novelisations and film adaptations and have gathered huge followings.
Blogs and wikis also serve to provide a coherent basis for a discourse analysis of a specific web language. What makes these forms distinctive as genres, and what effects does the technology have on language use? Myers looks at how blogs and wikis:
allow for easier than ever publication
link to texts, images, sounds, and video
provide alternate perspectives on events
exemplify glocalization
challenge demarcations between the personal and the public
redefine knowledge and authority
construct new communities.
Drawing on a blogroll of a wide range of popular blogs, and on some of the most debated articles in Wikipedia, the book works alongside an author blog that contains regularly updated links, references and a glossary. Each chapter has a guide to projects and reading. This is an essential textbook for upper level undergraduates on linguistics and language studies courses that will elucidate, inform and offer insights into a major new type of discourse.