Vernacular Web Blog

A few things kept on coming to mind while reading "Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web" by Robert Glen Howard. One of these things was the idea of class distinction, which is also the most obvious. There are two distinct classes, those, I guess the word I'm looking for would be participating, in the Institutional and those participating in the vernacular. The vernacular being in a sense the less powerful class while institutional is the dominant class. The most obvious example taken from the article would be the Kerry-Edwards Blog example. To get directly to the point, "The controversy began in July 2004, when the Kerry-Edwards Official Blog announced it was removing all links to a very popular blog named Daily Kos. On Daily Kos, a Kerry supporter named Markos Zuniga made incendiary comments about American contractors who were videotaped as they were burnt, dragged from their car, and hung on a bridge during the military conflict in Iraq. The Kerry campaign dubbed Zuniga’s comments “unpresidential language” and removed all links from Kerry’s site to Daily Kos" (p8). In this example the vernacular, on the surface anyway, appeared to have a voice and through that voice power. Unfortunatly they did not, once that voice was no longer in favor of the Institutional the links to the blog were cut. The events to follow should've and probably were foreseen, if those participating in the Vernacular could not voice themselves on that blog, they would do it on closely related blogs, and their entries would not be favoring.
To some degree this could even be compared to what James C. Scott was discussing in "Dominance and the Arts of Resistence." While it is not as drastic as the slave/master relationship, it is compareable. The idea of a blog gives people another form of that "backstage discussion" that Scott talks about. People can anonamously speak openly about what they disagree with and such.

Another idea that crossed my mind while reading the article was the idea of groups and folk. I could be wrong, but couldn't you consider those participating in their respective sides, the Vernacular and the Institituional, to be groups. Along this same line of thought, couldn't a folklorist analyze what brings these respective groups together? Even if I'm wrong and they couldn't... I'm going to do it anyway. As already stated the Vernacular (or the everyday speech of the people) is in some ways compareable to slaves or surfs, even if not to such an extreme extent. Those participating in it could be considered the less powerful of the two classes and this is probably what draws these people together to form the group. The common trait here is the idea of going against the institutional, even while your going along with it as stated in the Kerry-Edwards Blog. The institutional would be considered the more powerful class. Obviously if its a lack of power that brings the Vernacular group togetherm then it is the having of power that brings the Institutional together to form their respective groups. The Institutional, in cutting off links to certain blogs in the Kerry-Edwards example would be similar to putting down a revolt of sorts. Again, all this being not to such an extreme extent, but at its "grass roots" so to speak.

Basically, while reading the article the idea of classes crossed my mind quite often. I could be wrong in my train of thought but where there are classes, there are groups, and where there are groups there are people. (If that makes any sense...) The vernacular would be similar to the lower class while the institutional would be similar to the more powerful class. As always, it would appear the powerful are acting in the best intrest of the weak, but the Kerry-Edwards example shows that once you go against the best intrest of the strong, the powerful can easily turn on you, or away from you.