Fashion Blogs as Social Media texts: an LIWC Analysis

Abstract

The present paper presents linguistic analysis of the texts extracted from the ABOUT pages in 24 fashion blogs topping the list of influential fashion blogs in 2018. The fashion blogs under consideration are viewed as belonging to personal style fashion blog type. The present research aims at analyzing the way generic features of this type of discourse are displayed by the texts under consideration. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis technique was employed to study the texts in order to explore how consistent they are with social media text type (Twitter, Facebook, blog) according to pre-defined psychological and linguistic categories. LIWC output in relation to each text was interpreted in terms of traditional LIWC dimensions and LIWC variables. The main findings suggest that, linguistically, most texts tend to combine features that are typical of highly personal writing and formal writing intended for official use.