Englishes Online: :  A comparison of the varieties of English used in blogs 

Abstract: This study is based on data gathered from two corpora. It investigates and analyses the written English of second language users, in this case English used by Swedes, with the English used online in blogs found in the Birmingham Blog Corpus, which includes blogs written in English by authors of various nationalities. The aim is to compare Swedes’ use of English in blogs and the English used in general in blogs. The study focuses on typical features associated with either American English (AmE) or British English (BrE) and investigates which variety is the most prominent online.  The results indicate that features that are generally associated with AmE have a higher frequency in both analysed corpora in this thesis. The conclusion is therefore that AmE tends to dominate both Swedish and international authors’ use of English in blogs.