A Diachronic Approach to Web-Based Genres: The Case of the Personal Weblog

Abstract

This study pursues two related aims: (1) It develops a diachronic approach to web-based genres and explores its potentials and limitations. (2) As a case in point, it uses the genre personal weblog, providing a diachronic description of both recurrent and changing features of the genre. It applies a mixed-methods approach that draws on historical sources and the DIABLOC, a diachronic blog corpus, which spans 15 years from 1997 to 2012 and includes also examples of the very first weblogs. Analyses are selectively extended beyond the surface of blog-pages to their HTML source code. On the basis of corpus material, patterns of genre change such as migration, pattern embedding and genre split are described and embedded into a differentiated model of the development of the personal weblog genre.