filipino and american online communication and linguistic variation

World Englishes, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 143–161, 2012. 0883-2919

Filipino and American online communication and linguistic variation

JACK A. HARDY∗ AND ERIC FRIGINAL∗∗

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates cross-cultural and cross-register variation from four corporaof internet blogs and online opinion columns written in English by Filipino and American authors. Amulti-dimensional analysis following established linguistic dimensions from Grieve, Biber, Friginal, andNekrasova was used to compare the relative distribution of frequently co-occurring linguistic features, withthe goal of describing the statistical relationships and variations among the two selected internet-based reg-isters of these two varieties of English. Parallel corpora of Filipino and American blogs and opinion columns(N total texts = 5,320), with approximately 13 million words, and collected across a wide range of topics,were analyzed for this purpose. The texts were tagged for grammatical and semantic markers to matchthe resultant dimensions from Grieve et al. (as the main basis for comparison. Results show significantvariations in the linguistic composition of Filipino and American texts along four functional dimensions:(1) informational vs. personal focus; (2) addressee focus; (3) thematic variation; and (4) narrative style.

INTRODUCTION

This study is based on the traditions and methodologies set forth by Biber (1986; 1988)which follow a corpus-based, multi-dimensional analysis of linguistic variation amongregisters of speech and writing in English and also across other languages. Biber classifies“registers” as varieties of language defined primarily by their situational characteristics(as opposed to “text-type” which is a linguistically defined category). In other words,registers are identified according to their situations of use, taking into account purpose,topic, setting, interactiveness, or mode of speech and writing (Biber 2006; Biber, Conrad,and Reppen 1998). While this study investigates relationships between two internet-basedwritten registers represented by blogs and opinion columns, it also studies variation acrosstwo dialects of English from Kachru’s (1992; 1996) Inner and Outer Circles. Thus, themain goal of this study is to explore cross-cultural and cross-register variation by usingstatistical models that could further show the inherent linguistic similarities and differencesin Filipino and American Englishes which could be specifically obtained from parallelcorpora.

Linguistic variation in written texts can be analyzed by studying the situational contextin which they are created. For example, one could describe an opinion column as a text thatis published in an online newspaper or other periodical, generally written by a columnistor staff member and based on a range of topics or issues. This description of an opinioncolumn, however, does not describe the style in which it is written nor the typical linguisticcomposition of texts in this sub-register. A corpus of opinion columns could show extremevariety in style and linguistic composition even as all its sub-corpora are members of the

∗Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL, Georgia State University, 34 Peachtree St. Suite 1200, Atlanta, Georgia30303, USA. Email: [email protected]

∗∗Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL, Georgia State University, 34 Peachtree St. Suite 1200, Atlanta, Georgia30303, USA. Email: [email protected]

C© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

144 Jack A. Hardy and Eric Friginal

same register. However, Finegan (1994: 20) gives the working assumption of the study ofregister, which indicates that writers, setting, and communicative functions of texts, “willtend over time to develop identifying markers of language structure and language use,different from the language of other communication situations”. This means that while aregister is not defined by its markers of structure and use, it can be assumed that thesefeatures will become distinguishable from other communication contexts over time. Thisassumption is particularly interesting when taking into consideration a new, emergingregister such as blogs written in a particular language by writers who do not share the samefirst language and cultural backgrounds.

English in the Philippines

The Philippines is a Southeast Asian country with a population of approximately 90million people. As a linguistically diverse nation with over 100 indigenous languages,none of which are mutually intelligible (Asuncion-Lande and Pascasio 1979; Bernardo2004), most Filipinos are exposed to at least two local languages and English. This En-glish generally follows the variety spoken in the United States as an exonormative model(Ledesma and Morris 2005; Salazar 2008). Although colonized by the Spanish for over300 years, this colonization did not pave the way for the Spanish language to become fullyintegrated into the linguistic and cultural norms of the country, thus Spanish did not be-come a dominant second language spoken by Filipinos. In contrast, when Americans tookcontrol of the country in the early 1900s, they introduced mass education in English andthe Filipino people quickly embraced this language which eventually became a co-officiallanguage with Tagalog-based “Filipino” in the Philippine constitution. Today, English isstill mainly used as a language of science, business, and academic and political discourse.It is also extensively used in government, education, and popular media (Salazar 2008;Friginal 2009a).

According to Gonzalez (1998), “Philippine-American English” is a rightful variety ofthe English language which is in the process of developing a set of standards for itself inpronunciation (the segmental and suprasegmental elements), vocabulary (including wordsand collocations as well as new meanings and uses for words from the source languageand idioms which consist of loan translations from the Philippine languages), and inspecific features of syntax. The Philippines has been very open to a range of Americaninfluences, not only in language but also in popular culture such as music, television, andmovies. English publications written by Filipinos, which have been typically based onthese American English influences, have increasingly changed over the years to representa variety characterized by emerging “educated” norms.

A survey conducted by the Social Weather Station in in the late-1990s reported that75 per cent of the Philippine population claimed to understand and follow commandsin English; however, the actual level of proficiency among the general population variesfrom beginner to near-native (Salazar 2008). Proficiency in English in the Philippines isused as an educational and social stratifier (Tupas 2008). Government and private industryinfrastructures have created a divide between the elite speakers of an idealized “standard”(American) variety of English and those who do not have the opportunities or resources tobe educated in a school where such a standard could be acquired (Dayag 2004). Neverthe-less, English continues to be the language of access for employment and social mobilityto many Filipinos. The ability to speak English has allowed skilled Filipino workers


Filipino and American online communication and linguistic variation 145

employment overseas and in multi-national corporations nationwide (Ramirez 2001;Rodolfo 2005). Compared to other developing nations, the Philippines has a success-ful track record in providing English-speaking human resources to global outsourcers suchas those in international call centers (Friginal 2009a).

It is not surprising that many Filipinos pride themselves for being part of the “third largestEnglish-speaking country in the world” (Monsod 2003; Salazar 2008), with extensivebackground and access to mobile communications and the internet. The English languagehas become a fundamental part of Philippine media and especially technology-mediatedwritten discourse. At the same time, Filipinos currently have more flexible access tofree wi-fi communications, mobile media, and internet cafes. Social networking throughFacebook, Friendster, and Twitter; blogging, and ubiquitous English-based websites allowmany Filipinos to read and write in English regularly through online technology platforms.Many public and private universities in the country provide free internet access to theiremployees and students as Filipinos enthusiastically make use of this medium to send andreceive information and connect with friends worldwide.

Linguistic analysis of blogs and online opinion columns

A blog, originally coined as “weblog” by Jorn Barger in 1997 (Wortham 2007), is awebsite containing an archive of regularly updated online postings. Blog postings aregenerally made by a particular writer or blogger and presented in reverse chronologicalorder. The archive is usually made freely available to the public. Online postings tend toconsist primarily of raw text, but may also contain hyperlinks, advertisements, and othermedia, including pictures, videos, and sound files (Grieve, Biber, Friginal, and Nekrasova2010). It is common that blogs allow for readers to post comments or feedback as well. Interms of content, blogs appear to fall into one of two major types: personal or thematic.Personal blogs are those in which an author discusses his or her own life, evolving from thetraditional online diaries. Thematic blogs, on the other hand, are those in which an authordiscusses a particular topic other than himself/herself. Popular subjects for thematic blogsinclude current events, politics, arts, entertainment, sports, and technology, although inprinciple, any topic is permissible (Grieve et al. 2010).

As the blog register becomes an important, common, and widely recognized variety ofonline language, an increasing number of studies have looked at its linguistic properties.For example, Herring and Paolillo (2006) use selected linguistic features such as therelative frequency of pronouns, determiners, and certain function words to analyze genderdifferences in blogs; while Pushmann (2007) examines blog variation in expressions offuturity. Friginal (2009b) identifies the linguistic characteristics of blogs based on thegender and age of authors, together with the interactional effects of these two variables;and Grieve (2009) makes use of blogs representing authors from various dialect groupsin the US to explore and potentially quantify dialectal features of informal written texts.There have also been numerous analyses of blogs that have taken a non-linguistic approach,focusing on such topics as the social import of blogging (e.g. Gillmor 2003; Park 2003;Delwiche 2004), the content analysis of blogs (e.g. Papacharissi 2004; Herring et al. 2005;2007), and the rhetorical analysis of blogs (Miller and Shepherd 2004).

Corpus-based analyses of newspaper articles and editorials have been conducted overthe past few years (e.g. Jeffries 2003; Ratzkoff and Jhally 2004; Albakry 2004; 2007; Baker2006) and cross-cultural comparisons of news reports have shown various distinctions both



in the linguistic characteristics and topical features of reportage from different English-based newspapers (e.g. Baker and McEnery 2005; Roberts, Al-Sulaiti, and Atwell 2005;Kandil 2009). Newspaper-based opinion columns are very similar to private, personal andthematic blogs in that they follow a comparable wide-ranging set of topics written by anindividual for a specific group of target readers. Unlike news reports, opinion columnsare more personal and addressee-focused in style (Biber 1988). Also, one main differencebetween opinion columns and blogs is that the writing of an opinion column is attributableto the personal characteristics or credentials of its author. While bloggers write on their ownand are usually not paid to produce a blog, opinion column writers are usually affiliatedwith newspapers or publishers that follow some standard publishing and editing guidelines.Evidently, these two groups of writers may overlap in their treatment of subjects, but thereare clearer distinctions in these sub-registers related to formality, style, and mechanics ofdiscourse.

Grieve et al. (2010) provide a list of linguistically co-occurring properties of blogs (called“dimensions”) written in English—in other words, the linguistically defined sub-types ofblogs—from blog texts collected from 2004 to 2008 following Biber’s multi-dimensionalmodel. Given the importance and popularity of this register, a corpus-based, linguisticanalysis of blogs is clearly of descriptive value. It is then relevant to use these establisheddimensions in comparing, among other comparison groups, how Filipino and Americanbloggers and opinion writers write in English in this online context. Comparisons couldprovide various insights about the collective distribution of functional features of thelanguage when used by writers coming from two distinct cultural and first languagebackgrounds. Further, this model could be expanded to include other varieties of English.Because English in the Philippines has traditionally followed the American variety, it wouldbe interesting to explore how Filipino writers vary from American writers in their use of co-occurring linguistic features from a comparable set of written online registers. Results ofthis type of corpus-based comparisons could further support Gonzalez’s (1998) argumentthat educated “Philippine-American English” or “Philippine English” has achieved itsstatus as an independent, stand-alone variety of English which is deployed across structuresequipped to fully function in both local and international settings (Bautista 2000; Dayag2004; Tupas 2004).

THE STUDY

Corpora

Four parallel corpora were used in this study, comprised of two online written registers(personal blogs and opinion columns) from two varieties of English (Philippine Englishand American English). Overall, the texts collected in the four corpora were written fromthe period of 2003 to 2009. The total number of texts and the approximate number ofwords per sub-group are shown in Table 1.

The first corpus obtained for this study was the corpus of American blogs, which wascollected and analyzed by Grieve et al. (2010). This corpus contains over two million wordstaken from personal and thematic blogs from across the US from 2004 to 2008. To findblogs and to determine their writers’ gender, age, and state of origin, a blog database called“Globe of Blogs” (www.globeofblogs.com) was used to allow researchers a sampling ofpublicly available blog entries. A similar procedure was conducted to create a corpus of



Table 1. Corpora and number of texts and approximate number of words per register

Variety Register N Word Count

American Blogs 492 texts 2,271,147American Opinion Columns 4,643 texts 4,382,715Filipino Blogs 110 texts 2,338,902Filipino Opinion Columns 75 columnists 3,952,763

Total: 12,945,527

blogs written in English by Filipino bloggers. The Filipino corpus of blogs also used theGlobe of Blogs listing as the initial instrument to locate blogs based in the Philippines andwritten by Filipinos. After going through the database, the blogs were manually checkedfor their appropriateness (i.e. manual checking of writers’ background was conductedby scanning the content of the entries or contacting the writers to confirm their identitywhenever necessary). Once proper identification of the authors’ national backgroundswere established, only text entries written in English were manually selected for inclusionin the final corpus. Filipino blogs were not included in the corpus if there were manyinstances of code-switching between English and Tagalog or other indigenous languagesin the Philippines.

The American and Filipino opinion columns were both compiled from online edi-tions of various newspapers in the US and the Philippines. The texts compris-ing the American opinion columns were randomly sampled from newspaper sub-corpora collected for the American National Corpus (ANC, see ANC website at:http://www.americannationalcorpus.org/). These texts were published from 2003 to 2006.The Filipino opinion columns were obtained from online versions of English-only publi-cations in the Philippines (e.g. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, ManilaBulletin, etc.) published from 2008 to 2009. These texts have very similar subjectsfrom political and business commentaries, lifestyle, entertainment, travel, sports andleisure, and science and technology. Seventy-five individual columnists were selectedand several columns from each were compiled into the sub-corpus. Thus, althoughthere were seventy-five text files, these represent multiple columns from individualwriters.

After compiling the corpora, all texts were tagged for linguistic features using the Bibergrammatical tagger. The frequency counts of a total of 142 linguistic features were nor-malized per 1,000 words across texts. The current version of the Biber tagger incorporatesthe corpus-based research carried out for the Longman Grammar of Spoken and WrittenEnglish (Biber et al. 1999). The tagger identifies a range of grammatical features, includ-ing word classes (e.g. nouns, modal verbs, prepositions, verbs), syntactic constructions(e.g. WH relative clauses, conditional adverbial clauses, that-complement clauses con-trolled by nouns), semantic classes (e.g. activity verbs, private verbs, likelihood adverbs),and lexical-grammatical classes (e.g. that-complement clauses controlled by mental verbs,to-complement clauses controlled by possibility adjectives). Overall, the tagger performedsuccessfully over the blog and opinion columns sub-corpora at approximately 93.7 per centaccuracy.



Table 2. Dimension loadings

Dimension Features

Dimension 1: informational vs.personal focus

Positive: prepositions, attributive adjectives, nominalizations,passives, WH relative clauses, that relative clauses, postnominal to clauses, post nominal that clauses

Negative: emphatics, first person pronouns, discourse particles,hedges, past tense, time adverbials, place adverbials,progressive verbs, to clauses with desire/intent/decision verbs,quantity nouns, activity verbs

Dimension 2: addressee focus Positive: present tense, second person pronouns, do as PRO-verb,demonstrative pronouns, be as main verb, indefinite pronouns,WH questions, possibility modals, predictive modals,conditional subordination, necessity modals, mental verbs

Negative: prepositions, past tenseDimension 3: thematic variation Positive: demonstrative pronouns, emphatics, pronoun it, hedges,

clausal coordination, adverbs, conjuncts, predicative adjectives,factive adverbs, likelihood adverbs

Negative: second person pronouns, nounsDimension 4: narrative style Positive: That deletion, past tense, third person pronouns,

adverbial subordination (other), that clauses with factive verbs,to clauses with speech act verbs, to clauses withmodality/cause/effort verbs, communication verbs

Negative: nouns, attributive adjectives

Dimension scores

Corpus-based, multi-dimensional analysis was pioneered by Biber following the the-oretical assumption that register differences involve underlying patterns of linguistic co-occurrence. For example, when a writer shifts from one register to another, he/she naturallyshifts from one set of co-occurring linguistic features to a different set of co-occurringfeatures in order to communicate a particular message and relate to a particular audience.An extensive discussion on the statistical procedure and interpretation of corpus-based,multi-dimensional analysis can be found in Biber (1988; 1995; 2006), Conrad and Biber(2001), and Friginal (2008; 2009b).

For the purposes of the present study, the dimensions that emerged from a factoranalysis by Grieve et al. (2010) of American blogs were used to compare the distributionof linguistic features of Filipino and American blogs and opinion columns. Table 2 showsthe loadings of features and the subsequent functional interpretations from Grieve et al.(2010). Although these co-occurring features are labeled as positive and negative withineach dimension, there is not evaluation in this assignment. Instead, these labels show



polarity. Using dimension 1 as an example, if a text has high scores for the frequentlyco-occurring features on one end of the spectrum (e.g. prepositions, passives), it will havelow scores for the frequently co-occurring features on the other end (e.g. first personpronouns, emphatics).

To determine dimension scores for each text and each sub-corpus, the frequencies oflinguistic features from the four dimensions above were compiled. These frequencieswere then standardized across Filipino and American blogs and opinion columns, allowinghighly different distributions to be more comparable with each other and offering scores thatreflected a feature’s range of variation. Each dimension is comprised of linguistic featuresthat significantly co-occurred with one another and contained both positive and negativeloadings. Standardization of frequencies allowed for these complementary patterns ofpolarity as described above. When a text contains frequent instances of one group of co-occurring linguistic features (positive or negative), the features from the opposite groupare likely to be absent (Biber 1988). Using Grieve et al.’s resulting dimensions (Table 2),the standardized frequency data from the four corpora in the present study were then addedto obtain dimension scores per individual text. Once scores in all four dimensions hadbeen calculated for each text, mean scores per corpus were obtained by averaging thetexts’ dimension scores.

RESULTS

For each of the dimensions established by Grieve et al. (2010), four group scores ineach of the four dimensions are shown along continua to describe cross-cultural andcross-register linguistic distributions and relationships. Text samples with high or lowdimension scores are provided in the following sections to better understand the functionalcharacteristics and significance of these distributions. Because of space limitations, wehave decided to restrict these samples to those that best illustrate the co-occurrence offeatures and are relevant to the discussion of the findings.

Dimension 1: informational vs. personal focus

A total of 21 linguistic features represent dimension 1 with eight features on the positiveand 10 features on the negative sides of the factor. Blogs and opinion columns that loadedpositively were associated with having a highly informative or informational style (e.g.co-occurrence of prepositions, nominalizations, and attributive adjectives), and those thatloaded negatively were associated with an oral and personal (first-person) style of discourse(e.g. first person pronouns, hedges, adverbials, discourse particles, and progressive verbs).Thus, this dimension was interpreted as distinguishing between the “informational” vs.“personal” focus or style of texts.

The combined dimension scores (DS) of the four groups are plotted on the dimensionalscale for dimension 1 (Figure 1). Three of the four groups fall on the negative side ofthe scale (DS for American blogs = −5.668; Filipino blogs = −2.856; Filipino opinioncolumns = −0.922), which illustrates the more personal orientation of these online texts,while American opinion columns plot slightly on the positive side (DS = 0.682). Resultswere analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicating a significant effectfor group (F(3,5316) = 280.492; p < .001). Tukey post hoc analysis (HSD) contrasts, apost hoc test that checks for further significant differences across groups, indicated that in



1

0

American opinion columns (0.682)

-1 Filipino opinion columns (−0.922)

-2

-3Filipino blogs (−2.856)

-4

-5

-6American blogs (−5.668)

Figure 1. Comparison of dimension scores for dimension 1: informational vs. personal focus(ANOVA: group, F(3,5316) = 280.492; p < 0.001)

terms of their dimension 1 scores, all four groups were significantly different from eachother.

The groups with the highest and lowest mean dimension scores as shown in Figure 1were American opinion columns and American blogs, respectively. The two Filipino reg-isters both had negative average scores that fell in-between the two American registers.For the most part, the linguistic composition of American blogs differed significantly fromthe three other groups, especially with the consistent use of personal pronouns, hedges,adverbials, emphatics, and discourse particles by US-based bloggers. Although opinioncolumns are typically written in the first person, column writers tend to also use manyinformational features of discourse in order to discuss issues such as business and politics.Blogs, on the other hand, clearly have a well-defined personal and informal focus whichmay be influenced by the wide range of topics covered by bloggers on a regular basis.

The difference between Filipino and American blogs potentially indicates cross-culturalvariation in this register. Filipino bloggers (written in English, with very limited code-switching) had a more “academic” or “formal” tone than most American bloggers intheir treatment of personal issues and observations about current business, economic,and political events. This distinction could be attributed to the individual characteristicsof bloggers from the US and Filipinos who are blogging in English. While US-basedbloggers may represent a wide range of demographics (e.g. age, profession, and educationalattainment) and topical concerns, Filipino bloggers may be coming from a more definedgroup of educated young professionals pursuing very similar sets of contexts as they



Table 3. Text samples from Filipino and American blogs from dimension 1

File Dimension 1 score Text samples

US MT6 (blog) −14.712 Now maybe it’s just me but I seem less and less able thesedays to watch a crappy movie I just feel I shouldn’t haveto put up with it. Who are the morons writing these thingsbetter yet who are the morons allowing these movie to goforward into production. Has Hollywood run so dry onidea’s that they can only redo old ones. There’s nothingreally new and concepts have been repeated over andover. When would there be a something like ClockworkOrange shown with innovation that matches today’sdiscerning audiences? I guess Disney and crappytelevision have something to do with this.

US TX9 (blog) −12.581 It seems as i only get time to write here on sundays..o well iguess sunday is just the least busyiest day i have anymore.I think ill start out this entry talking about my week. Onmonday I went to school and then volleyball practice..apretty normal day to me. I’m getting better as I go along.Divine Ms. G was saying exactly the same thing to me theother day although I still was feeling bad about missinganother practice. Now, well I have to stay focused.

Fil Bas (blog) −9.512 The place was big. A 3-day 2-night stay would never beenough for you to explore this small island alone. Mr.Pooh and I had to plan how are we going to spend eachmoment wisely. There were three known beaches in theresort: Sunset beach, Sunrise beach and Hidden beach.There was also the option of exploring their little swampecosystem and trekking to the Eagle’s View to catch theentire island view from the top. There were all sorts ofactivities like bottom fishing, island hopping, Coronisland tour, diving and snorkeling. We gave islandescapade and snorkeling a go for the next day and tried toexplore the beaches a bit before the sun descended.

Fil Gib(blog) −7.421 The Festival happens at the PETA Theater Center fromOctober 24 to 26 2008. The festival carries the themeCreating a Good Life for the Filipino Children, whichstresses the need for all sectors of the civil societygovernment, professionals, academe, church and mediato work hand in hand in creating a safe and supportiveenvironment for our children and youth. I believe thisFestival is great for my family.

write and publish their blogs. Also, it should be noted that, a register consisting of code-switching has emerged in the metropolitan areas of the Philippines that is used for theseinterpersonal and rapport-based functions (Gonzalez 1992). This is relevant because theregister examined in the present study, did not examine texts that included code-switching.

Table 3 contrasts text samples from Filipino and American blogs showing the co-occurrence of linguistic features from the negative end of Dimension 1 (e.g. well, I, we,



6

5

American blogs (5.907)

4

3

2Filipino blogs (2.145)

1

0

-1

Filipino opinion columns (−0.597)American opinion columns (−0.667)

Figure 2. Comparison of dimension scores for dimension 2: addressee focus (ANOVA: dimension 2,F(3, 5316) = 177.189; p < 0.001; opinion columns between varieties, NS)

now, maybe). Although these texts are all clearly personal, there are some markers thatshow how Filipino blogs merge both personal and informational features of discourse morethan their American counterparts.

Dimension 2: addressee focus

A total of 14 linguistic features represent dimension 2, with only two features on thenegative side of the factor (prepositions and past tense verbs). The blogs and opinioncolumns that loaded highly positively in this dimension were associated with having astrong interactive nature and attention to the target reader (or addressee, as indicated,for example by the use of second person pronouns you or your) (Biber 1988; Chafe1985; Friginal 2009a). Texts that loaded on the negative side of the dimensional scalewere associated with a variety of styles that did not particularly address their audience.Figure 2 shows the mean dimension scores of the four groups of texts plotted on adimensional scale.

Filipino and American Blog corpora have positive mean scores (DS for Filipino blogs =2.145; American blogs = 5.907), while both Filipino and American opinion columnshave negative mean scores (DS for Filipino opinion columns = −0.597; American opinion



Table 4. Text samples from American blogs with highly positive factor 2 score

FileDimension 2score Text sample

US FL4 22.211 As an Intercessor, you should be praying:(blog) For the Pastor, pray that they have heard from God and

that they pass the word on to the church members. Praythat the plans that the enemy had for your Pastor iscancelled. Pray that your Pastor has a fresh annointing.And pray that your Pastor is blessed.

US KY6 19.985 That might sound bad, but I was kind of ok with it. That is(blog) until she said that I can never just do her a favor there’s

always some reason why I can’t. EXCUSE ME?? am Iher slave and didn’t know it, damn I wish someone hadlet me know! Wouldn’t this drive some of you insane?Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated, anysuggestions?

columns = −0.667). One-way ANOVA revealed a significant effect for group (F(3, 5316) =177.189; p < 0.001). This overall distribution between groups illustrates that cross-registerdifferences are primarily captured by the co-occurrence of features in dimension 2. Blogsand opinion columns written by Filipino and American authors significantly differ in howreaders are explicitly addressed in the texts. Blogs have relatively more second personpronouns, do as PRO-verb, demonstrative pronouns, be as main verb, indefinite pronouns,and necessity modals than opinion columns. In addition, many blog texts are written withquestions that invite actual answers or comments from readers. The interactive nature ofblog posts in this medium through easily accessible comment boxes makes it possible forauthors and readers to immediately exchange ideas online. Tukey HSD contrasts showedsignificant difference between the dimension scores of Filipino and American blogs butnot between the two corpora of opinion columns.

The two text samples in Table 4 were taken from US-based blogs which show a style ofwriting in which the audience is directly addressed by the writers. Text US FL4 providesdirect admonitions to the writer’s audience including the use of imperatives and commands(e.g. you should be praying). This style is also common in blogs focusing on such topics asfood and recipes, religion, technical support, and education. The second text sample, USKY6, addresses the reader by asking questions and requesting for comments or suggestions(e.g. Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated).

The American Blogs corpus loaded with a significantly higher average dimension 2 scorethan its Filipino counterpart. However, the Filipino Blogs corpus was still more addresseefocused than both groups of opinion columns. Compared to results from dimension 1, notall of the groups showed significant differences in their mean dimension 2 scores. Thedifference between Filipino and American opinion columns (DS = −0.597 and −0.667,respectively), did not exhibit statistical significance. The written characteristics of texts,as measured by this dimension, appear to be very similar, especially in how newspaperopinion columnists from the Philippines and the US address their target readers. This showsthat unlike blogs, texts from opinion columns are less likely to address their audience in



Table 5. Text samples from Filipino and American opinion columns with negative dimension 2 scores

File Dimension 2 score Text sample

Fil RO(opinion column)

−8.968 As expected, the meticulously chosen cast members areuniformly excellent as actors, singers, dancers. Eachdemonstrates rare persuasiveness in his/her role. JoannaAmpil as Maria combines charm and innocence. Withcompelling conviction, she conveys immediate attractionfor Tony, momentary anger at his accidental stabbing ofher brother Bernardo, and finally, utter heartbreak overTony’s death. (Incidentally, she bends over his dead bodyin a rather awkward pose.)

US Slate(opinion column)

−15.34 More controversial is Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, asurprise best seller about a Civil War deserter, which, tothe dismay of many critics, beat out DeLillo’sUnderworld for the National Book Award. The New YorkTimes, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post weeklybook reviews all leave it off their lists, but EntertainmentWeekly considers it the best of a “banner year foradventure stories.”

an interactive or direct way. Table 5 provides a sample of Filipino and American opinioncolumns with negative dimension 2 scores. These related texts (performance and bookreviews) could be contrasted with blog entries from Table 4 above.

Dimension 3: thematic variation

The positive features of dimension 3 are pronouns (demonstratives, it), emphatics,hedges, predicative adjectives, various adverbs (including conjuncts or linking adverbials),and clausal coordination. Second person pronouns and nouns plot on the negative side ofthe scale.

The features that loaded on the positive side of dimension 3 are likely associated with aspoken and conversational style. Biber (1988) and Biber et al. (1999) report that clausalcoordination, hedges, and predicative adjectives are more frequent in spoken than writtendiscourse because these are typical characteristics of unplanned language production. Inaddition, demonstrative pronouns and it are associated with generalized and inexplicitreferences and reduced lexical content, indicative of a shared context of communication;and hedges, emphatics, and factive and likelihood adverbs are all used to express stance,a common function of spoken language (Grieve et al. 2010).

Blogs have positive scores that impart a conversational tone compared to opinioncolumns. In particular, blogs in the present study shift rapidly from one topic to thenext, as is common in spoken discourse. The distribution of positive and negative meandimension scores of Filipino and American blogs and opinion columns (DS for Filipinoblogs = 1.454; American blogs = 3.795; Filipino opinion columns = −2.166; Americanopinion columns = −1.402) mainly illustrate this distinction. One-way ANOVA showeda significant effect for Group (F(3, 5316) = 107.688; p < 0.001) and post hoc analysis



4

3


2

1Filipino blogs (1.454)

0

-1

-2

American opinion columns (−1.402)

-3

Filipino opinion columns (−2.166)

Figure 3. Comparison of dimension scores for dimension 3: thematic Variation(ANOVA: Factor 3, F(3, 5316) = 107.688; p < 0.001)

(Tukey HSD) also revealed that all four corpora were significantly different from eachother in their use of the collective features of dimension 3.

The first three blog entries from Table 6 demonstrate the thematic shifts commonin American and Filipino blogs (American texts adapted from Grieve et al. 2010). Forexample, the writer in US PA4 discusses MySpace, golfing and his job in the spaceof a single one page posting. In contrast, most opinion columns have highly negativedimension scores as they focus on one topic per posting, developing a more organizedset of paragraphs with interrelated linguistic features that often repeat similar informationsuch as proper nouns and verb tenses. The nature of thematic variation in dimension 3 alsooffers further explanation for the high loading of clausal coordination and conjuncts. Ifa text, therefore, discusses numerous disparate ideas and topics, perhaps it is particularlynecessary to explicitly connect these parts through grammatical links (Grieve et al.2010).

Dimension 4: narrative style

The positive features of dimension 4 are past tense verbs, third person pronouns, thatdeletion, factive verbs with that clauses, certain forms of adverbial subordination (e.g.since, while), communication verbs, to clauses with speech acts verbs, and to clauses withmodality/cause/effort verbs (e.g. allow, leave, order). Nouns and attributive adjectivesplot on the negative side of the dimensional scale (see Figure 4). The positive features



Table 6. Text samples from blogs and opinion columns with positive and negative dimensional scores

FileDimension 3score Text sample

US PA4 21.452 I just spent the entire evening re-updating my Myspace. What a(blog) waste of my life. Oh well, it doesn’t matter.

Today I had my first ever golf outing. You see, it was the firstpractice for the golf team [. . .]

Anyways. . . the days before that, on Saturday and Sunday, I . . .

US MO1 19.234 I signed a lease last wednesday for my firstest apartment,which is pretty scary. Basically, I agreed to part with a lot ofmy very own hard earned dollars a month for a year [. . .]

(blog) I can’t remember what my last entry says, but basically Mark isan idiot, and I haven’t spoken to him [. . .]

Fil Bar 18.901 Majority of the attendies talked about Corazon Aquino and her(opinion column) contribution to democracy in Asia and the rest of the world.

It was also interesting to hear about the new developments inpassport renewal, and in some cases improvements about theDNF’s policies. It was a good to hear about progress, but Iwould be happier if traffic could be solved, especially inEDSA.

US N67 −14.047 On the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles(opinion column) (Matthew 10:2–4; Mark 3:16–19; Luke 6:14–16; Acts 1:13),

the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon theZealot (also called Simon the “Cananean,” the Aramaicword meaning “Zealot”) and by Judas of James.

2

1


0

Filipino blogs (0.765)

-1

American opinion columns (−0.188)

-2

Filipino opinion columns (−1.019)

Figure 4. Comparison of factor scores for Dim 4: narrative style (ANOVA: Dimension 4, F(3, 5316) =44.183; p < 0.001; opinion columns between varieties, NS)



Table 7. Text samples from blogs and opinion columns with positive and negative dimension scores

File Dimension 4 score Text sample

US GA6 19.50 Well folks I stopped at the natural health store and(blog) picked up something to help me sleep. I’m hoping

it works and I won’t have to go the prescriptiondrug route. Wish me luck.

Spoke to PD today. He called while I was at workand kept me on the phone for hours. At one pointhe asked if I was still attracted to him. I told himunfortunately, yes.

Fil Gas 10.453 I was talking to her the other day and it was clear that(blog) she was working on sending another application to

the DBP Developmental Grant. What a majorproject! I asked her if she would be willing tonegotiate this time. She had been very focusedlately about her career that she might not able totake other obligations, especially if they are mostlyvolunteer work in nature. She mght agree, I don’tknow. I have decided to ask again.

US ST −4.321 What gives a church in which celibacy is equated(opinion column) with holiness, in which males have almost all the

power, the right to a place at the table where lawsare made about women’s bodies?” Even manypracticing Catholics have a rather flexibleinterpretation of the Church’s rules on sex (“Howelse could Italy, Spain, and Poland have among thelowest birthrates in the world?”), yet Americanlawmakers appear poised to kowtow to the churchon any legislation regarding reproduction. “MostCatholics take a flexible view of the church’steachings on sexuality.”

Fil Inq −6.212 It seems that the intention here is to create division(opinion column) between the AFP and PNP and lay the predicate

that the coming elections will fail and create unrestin the process.

Let us all be vigilant and keep our faith in themilitary and our law enforcers. Let’s hope that theywill uphold the Constitution and respect the pillarsof democracy on May 10

of dimension 4 collectively mark narrative style of discourse and relate with previouslyestablished dimensions from Biber (1988) and Friginal (2009a). The two obvious markersof narration are past tense verbs and third person pronouns (e.g. I saw him take downthe flag the other day). In addition, communication verbs are used to report the speechof others (common in narration), and adverbial subordinators (e.g. since, while) are usedto make temporal reference—a way to mark time in a narrative (Grieve et al. 2010). Thenegative features of dimension 4 (nouns and attributive adjectives) are usually associated



with high information density and type/token ratio of written texts which are markersof informational focus (similar to the positive features of dimension 1, “informationalfocus”).

One-way ANOVA again reported a significant effect for group across the four corpora(F(3, 5316) = 44.183; p < 0.001) and significant difference in the mean scores of Filipinoand American Blogs (DS for Filipino blogs = 0.765; American blogs = 1.754). The slightdifference in the negative scores of the two groups of opinion columns (DS for Filipinoopinion columns = −1.019; American opinion columns = −0.188) did not report statisticalsignificance.

The co-occurrence of linguistic features in dimension 4 is illustrated in Table 7. Theblog texts with high positive scores are all clearly narratives, while opinion columns withnegative scores do not attempt to tell a story as they try to achieve different communicativegoals. The differences in pronoun usage, use of communication verbs, and tense areparticularly clear. Third person pronouns and communication verbs are often used in theblog excerpts, while these features are less frequent in Filipino and American opinioncolumns as shown by the third and fourth excerpts in Table 7.

CONCLUSION

This study has explored variation in the registers of blogs and online opinion columnsfrom two different varieties of English. By using a multi-feature, multi-dimensional anal-ysis, the distribution of linguistic characteristics between registers was described in termsof different functional continuums. Dimension scores across these four continuums showthe range of (statistically significant) differences in the textual characteristics of authors’written discourses. This investigation begins to look at how a relatively new register, blogs,compares to an established register, opinion columns, across American and Filipino En-glishes. Significant differences were found among the four groups along the functionaldimensions established in a previous study by Grieve et al. (2010). This result showsthat the registers across the different dialects functioned differently. For example, the twoAmerican registers exhibited more variability from each other than their Filipino coun-terparts. One might posit that as a register representing an established variety of English,this result would be expected as American English has had more time and instances forevolution of distinct, marked characteristics to develop (Finegan 1994) than PhilippineEnglish. In contrast, Philippine English is still developing its own set of standard markers,especially in expressing informational, personal, narrative, thematic, and interactive foci.The educated variety of Philippine English typically deviates from personal and involvedstylistic features of informal writing such as blogs written by American authors. Thisobservation is somewhat similar to the distinctions made in bilingual education or secondlanguage teaching studies, for example, Cummin’s (1984) model of teaching interpersonalcommunication skills and academic language proficiency. This finding also supports Gon-zalez’s (1992) claims of the influence that academic English has had on Filipino English.Gonzalez (1992: 766) states, for example, that “Filipinos generally speak the way theywrite, in a formal style”. Differences in the features of informal registers (e.g. blogs,conversations) between Filipino and American English samples would thus be expected.

Filipino opinion columnists wrote their texts much like their American counterpartsin this study. In dimensions 2 and 4, no significant difference was found between thetwo varieties in how writers addressed their audience or their usage of narrative features.



The style of not often addressing one’s audience in opinion columns, compared to blogs,is clearly a salient characteristic of this register shared by these two groups of writers.It suggests that Filipino and American opinion columnists follow similar guidelines andconventions for the most part. Thematic and topical variations may exist, but in general,the distribution of linguistic features across these opinion columns is relatively the same.

The register of blogs or blogging, considered in general as comprising more or less infor-mal written texts (Argamon, Koppel, Fine, and Shimoni 2003), involves the co-occurrenceof different stylistic and functional features for “native” and “non-native writers”. Amer-ican bloggers may come from many different backgrounds or demographics representinggroups such as age, level of education, socio-economic status, and profession with mucheasier access to computers with internet connection. A Filipino who blogs in English, onthe other hand, might be more likely to come from an educated or professional backgroundand typically based in major cities of the country such as Metro Manila, Cebu, or Davao.Such a person is skilled and confident enough to publish online and he/she also assumesthat readers are proficient enough in English to understand the writing. One might expectthat this more specific audience (i.e. Filipinos interested in reading an English blog) wouldhave influenced Filipino bloggers to focus more on structurally accurate features and moreorganized, cohesive discourse. In contrast, American bloggers typically do not considertheir readers’ language backgrounds and are perhaps more concerned with communicatingcontent rather than structural or organizational norms of what they see as informal texts.

Corpus-based, multi-dimensional analysis could be used as a model to compare varietiesof English across a wide-range of registers. The same comparison developed in this studycould further include other Outer Circle varieties of English in Asia such as Indian,Singaporean, or Hong Kong Englishes. A more detailed focus on other specific linguisticfeatures determined by functional dimensions could show the similarities and differencesin authors’ communicative norms confounded by their cultural and linguistic backgrounds.English in the Philippines has traditionally used “American standard” patterns in lexis andsyntax, but there are clear (“emerged”) differences in the overall linguistic characteristicsof these corpora that show specific variations that characterize the present linguistic normsof educated English in the Philippines.

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(Received 13 April 2011)


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