Speech Events in Online Fanfiction
Description
This study observes two fanfiction speech communities, Danny Phantom and Detective Conan. The members of these communities write stories based upon the canon within these two animated cartoons and interact with one another through reviews, author's notes, and story summaries. Using the speech community model, this community's unique practices and communicative repertoire will be identified and analyzed. Both of these fandoms show similarities with the overarching general fanfiction speech community, but they also possess key differences that define them as their own separate community. Fan jargon is used frequently in author's notes, reviews, and summaries to indicate fan expertise and membership within the fandom as well as exclude newcomers from understanding the information. This jargon remains largely the same across languages, and using it properly is important to being considered a true fan. Furthermore, many stories share similar elements that are not present within the source material, indicating that the fandoms possess a shared communicative repertoire. Review practices also show strong cultural norms that demand that reviewers offer praise and encouragement to the writers. Most criticism is phrased extremely kindly to avoid breaking cultural norms. Those who do not follow these cultural norms are shunned by the community, and required to apologize to maintain proper fan membership. Fan hierarchy is also examined, including the ways that big name fans and reviewers exert centripetal and centrifugal forces upon the language, simultaneously pushing it towards standardization and variation. Authors also use many face saving techniques to demonstrate their own lack of knowledge within the community, especially if they are new or inexperienced. The members of these communities share a deep cultural connection that is strengthened by their practices and repertoires.
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2017-05
Agent
- Author (aut): Dial, Ashtyn Nicole
- Thesis director: Friedrich, Patricia
- Committee member: O'Connor, Brendan
- Contributor (ctb): Computing and Informatics Program
- Contributor (ctb): Department of English
- Contributor (ctb): School of Music
- Contributor (ctb): Department of English
- Contributor (ctb): Department of English
- Contributor (ctb): Barrett, The Honors College