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Abstract
Blogs are a widely growing form of computer-mediated communication used to achieve various personal and professional communicative goals. In the present study, we examined previously posted entries from 71 regular bloggers. We examined the blogs for the use of five forms of verbal irony: hyperbole, understatement, rhetorical question, sarcasm and jocularity. In addition, topic and emotional valence of the ironic utterances were examined. Results showed that hyperbole and understatement were more frequently used than the other forms of ironic language. Discussion of hobbies and social outings was the most commonly occurring topic of ironic language, and bloggers used verbal irony to convey both positive and negative intent. The results of this study demonstrated that adult bloggers do use a variety of forms of verbal irony in their personal blogs, despite the potential risk of being misunderstood.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Jeremy Johnson, Gemma Leonard and Devon McConnachie for their assistance in coding the blog materials. Portions of this research were presented at the May 2009 meeting of the International Communication Society meeting in Chicago, IL. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, in the form of a Canada Graduate Scholarship to Juanita M. Whalen and a Standard Research Grant to Penny M. Pexman, a Région de Bourgogne (France) FABER Postdoctoral Fellowship (05512AA 06S2469) and an Economic and Social ResearchCouncil (UK) Postgraduate Research Studentship (R00429934162) to Alastair J. Gill, and was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) to Scott Nowson.