'Not sure what is going on today': Verbal evidential strategies in celebrity gossip blogs

Abstract

Celebrity gossip blogs are rapidly becoming a widespread discursive practice to know the latest news about the rich and famous. Due to the numerous gossip blogs that exist in the blogosphere and their continuous flow of news, the bloggers feel the pressure of the immediacy that is linked to the readers’ frequent access so as to keep their knowledge updated. As a result of this informative frantic pace, the bloggers make use of a whole array of sources that provide them with the newest gossip. They then use this gossip to comment and further assess it through their own opinions. This study follows a quantitative and qualitative approach to a selection of celebrity gossip blogs in order to determine the most recurring verbal evidential strategies used by bloggers. Evidentials can be defined as those markers that indicate the source and reliability of the information. In particular, they refer to whether the information is seen, heard, reported, inferred, etc. The results of the study point to three main verbal strategies that reflect the blog writer’s acquisition of information: hearsay verbs attributed to external sources, mindsay and verbs of perception averred by the blogger. The use of these specific verbal markers suggests the writers’ wish to attract the audience so that they participate actively with their own comments regardless of the veracity of the gossip.