An Quantitative Stylistic Analysis Of Internet Homepages

The proliferation of homepages on Internet has made it a new genre. Since so little has been studied about them linguistically in the past, this thesis intends to make a stylistic analysis of it. Based on Swale's genre theory and Crystal's analytical approach, this work attempts to define homepages as a genre and tries to find the common features among them. It has examined eighty group homepages and one hundred and two personal homepages, focuses of analysis being on the verbal part of group homepage and the non-linguistic features of personal homepages. With the assistance of computer software and programms, especially EXCEL, SPSS, and FOXPRO, the present study has identified some linguistic characteristics at lexical, grammatical level and within other dimensions on homepages. Within the categary of personal homepages, several possible purposes of personal homepages have been identified and the characteristics of each have been displayed in the thesis. Implications are given in the final part of the thesis, which might be of some reference value for future research.