Features of the internet blogs language

Key words: the Internet, the Internet blog language, linguistic features, phonetics, lexical level, grammar.

Гуліч О., Гниря А. Особливості мови інтернет- блогів

Анотація. Ця стаття присвячена вивченню особливостей мови інтернет-блогів. Актуальність дослідження зумовлена зростаючим впливом Інтернету на всі сфери життя людини, в тому числі і на спілкування, і, відповідно, зростаючим інтересом лінгвістів до інтернет-спілкування. Актуальність проблеми визначила мету статті - виявити та проаналізувати особливості мови інтернет-блогів на фонетичному, лексичному та граматичному рівнях. При вивченні цього питання було встановлено, що на рівні фонетики можна говорити про фонетичні та графічні ознаки, такі як звуконаслідування, використання вигуків і окличної інтонації, а також графічне виділення за допомогою розділових знаків, шрифту, верхнього регістру і смайликів. Ці інструменти допомагають блогерам максимально повно передати задум свого письмового та усного повідомлення, а читачам відчути себе рівноправними учасниками спілкування. На лексичному рівні виявлено, що вживання слів та оборотів у блогах безпосередньо пов'язане з родом діяльності, інтересами, емоційним настроєм автора та метою створення посту, а також у ряді випадків залежить від платформі, на якій було створено пост. Граматичні категорії, що мають абстрактний характер, відіграють важливу роль у створенні експресивно-емоційного впливу на читацьке сприйняття блогу: мова може йти про такі особливості, як часте вживання особистих займенників 1-ї та 2-ї особи, утворення нових прикметників шляхом додавання слів та частини словосполучень, домінування простих оповідальних речень і вживання імперативу. Інтернет-мова є специфічною комунікативною сферою і впливає на мову інших сфер, поширюється за межі Інтернету. Таким чином, вчені повинні вивчати ці мовні явища, щоб йти в ногу з часом.

Ключові слова: Інтернет, мова інтернет-блогів, мовні особливості, фонетичний рівень, лексичний рівень, граматичний рівень.

Today the Internet is an integral part of people's lives. As one of the most active means of communication, the Internet not only contributes to the emergence and development of various network communities, but also significantly affects the linguistic reality. One of the most interesting problems in linguistics today is the study of virtual language since the Internet has become a special kind of environment, which not only generally contributes to the development of language studies, but also generates new units that are unique to this environment. So this topic is very relevant today.

Nowadays a lot of scientists study this topic among them: Arnold I.V [1]; Tyshchenko O. [2]; Tulusakova O.G., Havry- lyak K.M. [3], Kuznetsova O. [4]; Chemerkin S.G. [5] and others.

In this article, we will consider the units of the Internet blog language at the phonetic, lexical and grammatical levels.

English-language dictionaries define "blog" as "a web page created to inform about a certain subject, on which new information is always located at the beginning of the page" [6, p. 142], or "a biographical online journal: a type of diary on a website that constantly changes to report the latest news. At the same time the page usually contains someone's personal opinion, comments or impressions" [7, p. 145].

Due to the written-verbal format of communication, which is typical for blogs, the authors have the opportunity to combine textual verbal information and nonverbal information of all types (gestures and facial expressions in video blogs, intonation and pauses in podcasts, visual means of conveying information, etc.). For example, in the podcast "My Brother, My Brother and Me" [8] during the discussion of the derby, the hosts actively used such means of aural expression as sound imitation (hoofbeat), exclamatory intonation (Derby time! I'm not kidding! Give me these horses!), interjections (A-ha! Come on! Oh-o!) and doubling of vowel sounds (Derby-y-y! He loves the spee-e-ed.) The use of such phonetic means in the speech allows us to judge the hot interest of the presenters regarding the races, and simultaneously with the use of colloquial and emotionally colored vocabulary allows us to judge the style of the podcast.

However, along with the phonetic means, the authors of this blog also use graphic means: We don't know about you, but we're still feeling that post-Derby glow. Seeing all those big, magnificent animals do their best out on that sloppy, sloppy track has prepared us for whatever life has to throw at us this week. GOD, horses are good. The emphasis of the word "god" in this way intended to let the audience know in advance how interesting this topic is, how emotional its discussion will be.

We can also find other graphic means in the blog of the English writer Neil Gaiman [9]. Most of the post is a written monologue of the author, a narrative addressed to the reader, but italicized thoughts that are addressed not to the reader, but to the author himself. By italicizing, the author makes it clear that these phrases are part of an internal monologue that took place at the time of the events described.

Punctuation is also important for this level of blog text analysis. Thus, using the example of the micro-blog of American actress Anna Kendrick, we can see how punctuation is used to enhance the comic effect of the entry. The author puts a period after the phrase "Oh God," which is traditionally emphasized by a comma, thus increasing the pause that the reader will make between sentences. The longer pause after the words "Oh God" should suggest that the next part may contain some extremely serious information, but ironic remarks follow. The pause between the two sentences enhances its comic effect: Oh God. I just realized I'm stuck with me my whole life.

For another example of the use of punctuation as a means of expression: instead of the traditional use of quotation marks to indicate direct speech, the author uses brackets, but the ellipses are more important here. A long pause in speech (in this case, an internal pause) is converted by the author in writing into ellipses: (..... I'm doing a really good "listening face"I wonder what they're saying...) - me all the time.

An important graphic means of expression in modern blogs are emoticons or emoji - pictograms depicting an emotion. Their use can also be seen in Anna Kendrick's mini-blog: the emoticon "broken heart", which is intended to express a sense of sadness and regret over the death of actress Cary Fisher. In another entry, "hands raised in joy" expresses the actual joy of watching Hidden Figures. In this recording we see a combination of graphic means - along with the emoticon, upper register is used, which in this case expresses the author's inner emotional uplift.

In addition, emoticons can not only convey emotion, but also perform an evaluative function. An example of such use can be found in a tweet by Sophie Newton [10], a director of short films. In a post from April 6, 2017, talking about TV series, the girl used "asterisks" to indicate the high quality of the TV product. The number of emoticons and their form together correspond to the highest rating in the traditional form of evaluating any item or phenomenon - 5 stars out of 5.

The phonetic and graphic means given in the examples create a field of non-verbal means of communication, making the written and oral speech of the participants of communication brighter, richer and more relevant. This helps bloggers to fully convey the intent of their message, and readers to feel like equal participants in communication.

Considering blogs at the lexical level, we can note that the linguistic personality is verbalized in the blog through the use of turns of speech, correlated directly with the kind of activity, interests, emotional mood of the author and the purpose of creating a record, as well as in some cases depends on the platform used to create the post.

It is considered that the main feature of a personal blog is the dominance of colloquial speech in the texts, except for the blogs of famous politicians (their blogs are dominated by official business vocabulary). However, on the Internet you can find examples that contradict this judgment. For example, in the personal blog of Sam Harris [11], we can find more bookish than colloquial language. We find the following words that are more neutral and bookish than colloquial: fundamental (instead of the more colloquial basic), tenaciously (instead of the more colloquial doggedly), acquire (instead of obtain or get), surrender (instead of give in), perpetual (instead of never-ending). The use of such vocabulary allows readers to judge the author's level of education and to assume the sphere of his activity.

The podcast hosted by Sam Harris is filled with even more specific vocabulary [12]. In the November 13, 2016 edition, the publicist dialogues with David Krakauer, a mathematical biologist and professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Discussing the links between the complexity of information and the development of human intelligence, the interlocutors use a large number of terms such as: networked adaptive system, computational and physical models, consilience, the H-Theorem, thermodynamic entropy, electromagnetic impulses, etc. These words belong to the scientific book vocabulary, they are unambiguous and devoid of expression. Their presence in the speech indicates the narrow sphere of activity of the speakers and their level of specialized knowledge. That is, despite the fact that both the blog and the podcast are personal, the spoken vocabulary is not dominant, but depends on the sphere of interest of the author.

In contrast, we can give the example of Donald Trump's Twitter blog [13]. Contrary to the opinion that the official accounts of politicians have an official business vocabulary as their main language, the tweet of the 45th President of the United States very often contains informal and even colloquial vocabulary. Thus, in Trump's blog we can find the following words and expressions: phony hypocrites (instead of the less colloquial fraud or impostors), laugh up one's sleeve (colloquial phraseology with the meaning "to be secretly or inwardly amused"), on its last legs, it's dead, etc.

Why is it that the Fake News rarely reports Ocare is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives? It's dead!

This combination certainly belongs to the colloquial vocabulary, and in this case it can be called a highly successful play on words. The use of colloquial language in an official profile allows one to make more expressive statements, thereby standing out from other politicians and attracting readers who are not particularly interested in the political sphere of life to one's side.

The evaluative potential at the lexical level is often associated with an emotional response, so in blogs we can find the use of such words and combinations as "blow one's mind", "what a dream", "incredible experience", "atmospheric", "totally recommend", "wonderful" and so on. These are evaluatively and emotionally marked vocabulary, perceiving it, the reader has the opportunity to get an idea of the emotional experience of the author, his mood in life, and even in some way share the experiences experienced, directly communicating in the comments.

The grammatical level of analysis is subdivided into morphological and syntactical. The morphological features of blogs are primarily the frequent use of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns, as well as the corresponding possessive pronouns. It is by this means that bloggers achieve the expression of their position and find a response from readers. The previously mentioned Neil Gaiman's blog and a number of others, such as Lucy Moon's blog [14], are examples of this use of pronouns:

I want to get a tattoo. I've wanted one for years, I know roughly what I want and the artist who I want to design it. However I feel as though this is a really bad time in my life to get a tattoo. The kind of time in your life that you look back on and regret all of the rash decisions you made. Saying you needed more time, that you should have waited. That you shouldn't have pursued that person, that you shouldn't have had that ridiculous hair cut.

Another notable feature at the level of morphology is the tendency of authors to combine several words or stable word combinations into one on the principle of word formation and to use them in texts as one adjective with an expanded meaning. An example of this feature is John Battelle's blog [15]. We can find words such as "too-clever-by-half," "high-on-camaraderie," and "70-million- views-in-one-day". All of these words were used as adjectives. We can say that this way of word formation serves to increase expression, because the author believes that a combination of words will more accurately express a thought than a single word-synonym.

Syntax is important for the grammatical level of text analysis of blogs. The syntax of personal blog entries is usually in accordance with the author's chosen style of communication with readers: the conversation format is realized using simple extended sentences, while the disclosure of personal attitudes to some specific situations requires complex constructions. For example, in Lucy Moon's blog [14] the girl talks about buying a new apartment. Since this is a domestic topic, simple narrative sentences quantitatively prevail over complex ones: ("The viewing came around, I looked, I fell in love. I fell in love with the beautiful bedroom,/.../") and parallel syntactic constructions ("I found a place /.../1 fell in love with the beautiful bedroom, /.../1 thought about it for the rest of the day. Later that evening I received a call, /.../1 feel at peace here.").

In the blog of Sam Harris [11], mentioned earlier, the topics of the entries are specific - the author writes in philosophy and neurobiology, and his texts are characterized by the use of complex sentences, with adjectives of action, purpose, and reason:

Intellectual honesty allows us to stand outside ourselves and to think in ways that others can (and should) find compelling. It rests on the understanding that wanting something to be true isn't a reason to believe that it is true--rather, it is further cause to worry that we might be out of touch with reality in the first place. In this sense, intellectual honesty makes real knowledge possible.