Personal journal blogs as manifest internal conversation toward self-innovation: A semiotic phenomenological analysis

Abstract

Abstract This work is a semiotic phenomenological approach of writing in personal journal blogs to define and verify their potential as continuous and sustained movement toward personal change or self-innovation. The analysis juxtaposes, by quantitative and qualitative methods, chronological self-referential text data (semiotics) with the meaning of internal conversation disclosed in discourse (phenomenology). We take a specific blog domain for posts from random bloggers that would present self-referent terms as "I feel", "I think", "I believe", "my life", etc. Then we selected those posts with dense self-descriptions and expression of disparate personal thoughts and feelings. Approximately 150 posts were analyzed, resulting in a final sample of 12 homogeneous posts from a heterogeneous group of bloggers, nine females and three males, all native English speakers. We conclude that personal blog texts help convey psychological well-being through dialogical self-clarification, facilitate the emergence of new perspectives or self-actualizing, and can lead to self-innovation.