Group G: alessia f. (e-tivity two)

“Desperate Housewives” is one of the most enjoyable and brilliant US shows I regularly follow, so that’s the reason why I chose to analyse this blog. First of all, I definitely like knowing all the news relating to the serial, and here I can find succulent news and spoilers about the 4^th season, new to the Italian audience. Then, I love the photos published, which show Teri Hatcher and Eva Longoria (two of the most fascinating actresses of the soap), the former in the throes of taking off her shirt in a park, and the latter in a commercial. There’s also some gossip about one male character; moreover, I could watch the videos of the new episodes: just fantastic! In short, this blog helps the reader get to know his/her favourite stars, and I’d recommend it to anyone who loves the show.

After each post there are some tags (clickable words) referring to some relevant topics just mentioned in the post itself: I found them useful, especially if you wish to further investigate a particular subject you are interested in.

The language is informal, sometimes very colloquial and idiomatic. The personal pronoun I is written i, the form she’s is replaced with the simpler shes, going to becomes gonna, etc. Punctuation is neglected and sometimes reading becomes awkward and difficult to understand (e.g. “[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt Shouldn’t there be some law that prevents Marc Cherry from telling Eva Longoria she can’t get pregnant?”). There’s a frequent use of acronyms, e.g. OMG, standing for oh my God, STD, meaning sexually transmitted diseases (referring to a character in the show), IDK, that is I don’t know, etc. One person in a post wrote the symbol $ rather than money: the tendency to lighten and simplify the writing is clear throughout the whole blog. While the blog’s owner tries to integrate the link into the text, using a clickable word, the bloggers don’t use this device: they write the link at the end of the post, putting down the url.

The 2^nd blog I decided to take into account is far more thoughtful: it deals with father’s rights, child support and custody. The blog publicizes a new book, “Taken into custody”, exposing the injustices of American Family Courts. It’s interesting to focus on this matter: it’s not very popular here to talk about that and it seems as if it were a taboo.

The first thing which struck me was that the links are integrated into the text and have the aspect of one or more clickable words (sometimes a whole sentence), so the reader immediately knows what topic is hidden behind the link. Sometimes, the clickable words are in a different colour (red or blue) and bigger than the rest of the text in order to catch the reader’s attention. What is important to remark is that language choices change as opposed to the previous blog: here they’re much more specific (the semantic field is different and relates to child rights, custody and support) and the language is formal; some posts have a journalistic approach (the documents answer the questions who?, what?, where?, when? and how?) because they report what has happened. The bloggers’ posts respect grammar rules and punctuation: in this sentence I even noticed a semicolon, rather odd in a blog! (e.g. “[…] The Author has the rare talent of being able to see the problem for what it truly is; being able to describe it pointblank, pulling no punches, and telling it exactly the way it is.”) As opposed to the other blog, here the bloggers use inverted commas to cite reference books.

The two blogs I analysed are totally different in style and approach: the first one is about TV, a frivolous matter which shows a careless style, and a very informal and colloquial language; the second one is a reference guide to all the people who want to know more about child custody and support: the language tends to be formal and the bloggers suit their way of writing according to the blog in which they write. There’s a sort of “hidden convention” which links all the participants in a blog.

Have good surfing!

alessia