Blogs: A Resource of Online Interactions to Develop Stance-taking

Abstract

Blogs, which are shared online journals that can provide commentary on different subjects and allow users to reflect, share opinions and discuss various topics, help the bloggers build social relations with their readers and other blogger and give them an opportunity to be involved in public discussions. They allow anyone's voice to be heard and resist hierarchical modes of information, dissemination and communication. Certainly, blogs include the kind of vocabulary, and structure based on which authors can develop their own position, stance and self-presentation. This kind of representation is called stance-taking. When writers show their stances they signal a relation to others. This is a way of presenting one's own contribution to a position. The purpose of this study would be the analysis and the identification of stance-taking in blogs. The focus of the study, therefore, would be on those frequently used vocabulary in the blogs that mark stance of the writers and on the analysis of these markers in context. This study has implications for EFL learners and non-native writers to get familiar with the patterns of effective writing in academic setting in general and in educational blogs in particular.