Tone and context go hand in glove as it were. What makes blogging novel is that it is relatively de-contextualized. Even though we try to construct context through audience (the identifier of a “biblioblogger” for one), what we write will go beyond the distinct audience of intent.

So are tone and timidity therefore mutually exclusive? I would concur that they are not. However, a certain restraint in tone and one’s contextual and audience considerations in the act of writing certainly are.

I would venture that Jim has no particular audience in mind when he writes. But based on your observation of the various roles in which you find yourself, you recognize, perhaps on an unconscious level, that any of those roles may be an audience for what you write in this forum. I very much have those considerations in mind as well. I don’t much care if I offend, I just want to offend for the right reasons and in the right way that I see fit.

But this is an interesting concept to explore “self-exegesis” we can call it. It is something that I require of my students. As I tell them, your imaginary conversation partner is the research that you use to construct your argument. Whenever you write you have a conversation partner, even it is yourself or a memory of something. That is what conditions the tone of the language used perhaps more than anything else.