A STUDY OF LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF WEBCOMMENTS ON AMERICAN IDOL BY AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE

Abstract

This thesis made a study into the linguistic features of webcomments on American Idol by American and Vietnamese in order to discover some typical linguistic features and then find out the similarities and differences in terms of the grammatical features, pragmatic features, commonly-used forms and paralinguistic cues between these two kinds of webcomment on American Idol. The research was conducted based on the combination of a variety of methods, namely qualitative, quantitative, descriptive and contrastive analysis. 810 samples of AWAI and 810 samples of VWAI were collected from the internet for recent years. The findings showed that along with some similarities, there were a number of noticeable differences. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide useful knowledge to enable better use of webcomment languages in cross – cultural communication in American and Vietnamese. L2 learners interprete webcomments and achieve effective communication on the internet.