ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two examples of virtual communities and focuses on the role played by language in their construction: the communicative patterns that result from node-oriented interactions on Facebook, and the shared values expressed by viewers on TED.com. Social research into virtual communities has often focused on users' lists of friends or followers, as well as factors such as how active they are on the site, and how they customise their profile page. The cancer blogs explored by Page constitute a particular kind of online community, labelled a support group by Herring. Social network sites depend for their very existence on the relationships that people make, and ways to facilitate relationship-building are a part of the site infrastructure. Applied linguistics research highlights the key role that language plays as users establish and maintain relationships with each other in disembodied online contexts.
