The Pragmatics of Peer Advice in a LiveJournal Community

Language@Internet, 7 (2010). P. 1-19Soliciting and giving advice has been examined in a variety of contexts, including institutional settings and computer-mediated environments. However, research on the latter has focused predominantly on issues of social support, trust, and credibility and has not looked specifically at the pragmatics of advice. This study employs a pragmatic perspective to investigate patterns and structures of peer advice interactions among members of an online motherhood community on LiveJournal.com. The findings suggest that advice exchange is a common type of social interaction in this online community of peers. Moreover, messages that solicit and provide advice have distinctive structural and pragmatic features.