An investigation of genre and grammatical positioning in an online community

The focus of this study is a message forum at the website www.Soapzone.com. The site features forums for discussion of currently broadcast American soap operas. Examined is the member-generated structure of postings. The data for this qualitative study consists of forum posts, survey responses and interviews with forum members. Perceptions of community norms and practices are examined along with grammatical features from forum postings. Members of the online community align genre with perceptions of the community culture and practices. The post types at Soapzone.com can be distinguished as genre types through grammatical elements of evaluation and affect.