oral presentation on online diaries

Today I had my presentation on the differences between a ‘traditional diary’ and an online diary. First I gave an embarrassing quote from the famous diarist Samuel Pepys.

‘This night I had a strange dream of bepissing myself, which I really did’.

This was a good way to grab the audience’s attention. I compared this diary with an online journal by Daphne. I compared instances of referring to your own writing (e.g. via hyperlinks), and repetition. The latter may not be as frequent in Online Diaries. After this I discussed some theory and I ended my presentation with posing some interesting questions.

– Do ODs show more spelling mistakes?

– Is there really less repetition?

– What are the main linguistic features of online diaries, do they differ between the sexes and do they change over time?

The latter question is my thesis statement for my BA thesis.

I think the presentation went really well. Afterwards I had an interesting discussion with our teacher, who seemed to be really interested in this topic.

The others presented the following:

– Language used in real-time chat

– A feminist critique of ‘the figure in the carpet’ by Henry James

– Discussion of face threatening acts in Greek disagreements

– Post colonialism in ‘translations’ (a play written in English by an Irish author)

Everything is going fine.

I am also working on the translation project.

Tomorrow will be all about my thesis.