Internet language as the study object of social networking communication discursive pragmatics

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Internet language as the study object of social networking communication discursive pragmatics

Luchak-Fokshei A-M.M.,

postgraduate student, Department of Philosophy, Ivan Franko Lviv National University (Ukraine, Lviv), am.luchak.edu@gmail.com

Luchak M.M.,

PhD, Associate Professor, Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine, Chernivtsi), am.luchak.edu@gmail.com

The authors analyze David Crystal's lingvo-philosophical concept, its creative and methodological potential in solving the problem of natural language transformation in the cyber space and the influence of the Internet language on the socio-sphere through computer-mediated communication. The paper examines the significance of linguistic intersubjectivity structures and intentional content in the theory of Yurgen Habermas, as well as the possibility of their application to the analysis of social network communication in the terms of the methodology of discursive pragmatics.

Keywords: social network, discursive pragmatics, Internet language, discourse, socio-sphere, cyber-sphere.

(стаття друкується мовою оригіналу)

crystal creative cyberspace language

Лучак-ФокшеиА.-М. М., аспірантка кафедри філософії, Львівський національний університет ім. Івана Франка (Україна, .Львів), am.luchak.edu@gmail.com

ЛучакМ. М., кандидат наук, доцент, Чернівецький національний університет ім. Юрія Федьковича (Україна, Чернівці), am.luchak.edu@gmail.com

Інтернет--мова як об'єкт дослідження дискурсивної прагматики соцмережевої комунікації

Автори аналізують лингво-філософську концепцію Девіда Крістала, її творчий та методологічний потенціал у вирішенні проблеми трансформації природної мови в кібер-просторі та впливу мови інтернету на соціальну сферу за допомогою комп'ютерної комунікації. У роботі досліджується значення мовних структур інтерсуб'єктивності та навмисного змісту в теорії Юрген Хабермаса, а також можливість їх застосування до аналізу соціальної мережі в термінах методології дискурсивної прагматики.

Ключові слова: соціальна мережа, дискурсивна прагматика, Інтернет- мова, дискурс, соціосфера, кіберсфера.

The stability of the world requires common understanding, openness and collective actions. A critical discussion of the planetary size issues was made possible by emergence and deep penetration of social and communication networks into the human life, which created the possibility of a rationally organized discourse system. The network structure of modern society was noticed by Spanish sociologist M. Castells, who noticed that network logic as the logic of a new social structure significantly affects social movements, the state and other subjects of social interaction. Networking occurs even before formation of the information society as a form of existence of interconnections between individuals, groups and nations. It embodies the synergy of all known types of interaction and the complexity of their combination. Today, the network has a significant impact on all human life spheres.

The phenomenon of the network today has a universal status. The network is a project of humanity not bound by borders, but united by common discourse and values.

From the standpoint of discursive pragmatics, it is verbally modeled human reality. Language as a sign system in it becomes not only a means of expressing thoughts, but also a tool for constructing reality. The modeling and design functions are the most important, since in this way a person is able to create. By using different language tools, we color the words and make the expression of our feelings more reliable. However, virtual space is deprived of voice and non-verbal means of interaction that cause language transformation. A man creates his own narratives to give meaning to his existence, delivers discourses in accordance with generally accepted semantic matrices in order to reach understanding. In order to compensate for the disadvantages of the virtual space, the natural language is transformed, replacing the emotions with «emoticons», passing the meanings «by memes» reducing the words in order to accelerate statements. Accordingly, such transformations change the language as a means of modeling, and hence - person's reality. That is why the analysis of the modification of language in the virtual environment becomes crucial to the discursive pragmatics of social networking communication.

The purpose of the article is to research theoretical approaches to the analysis of the natural language modification in the virtual environment, as well as the influence of discourse on social reality constructing.

Intersubjective interaction between actors takes place in the form of verbal communication. The development of language demonstrates that the old methodological paradigm of its analysis and communication could hardly be applied to the study of transformations taking place in the 21st century. Today, the main interest of philosophers and linguists switches to the issue of language functioning from the problem of how the language is arranged. Similarly, by forming the discursive pragmatics of social networking, we must ask a question what functions it should perform in order to model the reality of civil society. First of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that Internet communication refers to a set of certain speech acts (games), anthropological and social factors. Using the conceptual apparatus of E. Casirrer philosophy it is a new dimension of human reality, its own symbolic universe. Since its inception, the Internet has begun to embody the virtual space, which thinkers have positioned for a long time as something abstract or one of the possible worlds. We would like to remind that the concept of 'virtual reality' is not new in the conceptual sphere of modern philosophy. The idea of 'virtuality' could be found in the works by Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa and others. Representative of German philosophy G. Leibniz wrote about 'virtual innate ideas' . G. Hegel uses the notion of 'virtuality' to denote the form of existence of real in ideal. For E. Casirrer symbol is a tool that allows you to form a variety of subject areas. It is similar to the I. Kant's 'a priori form' and allows us discovering the world around us. Thus, a symbolic reality, a combination of symbolic forms, to which the philosopher enlisted myth, religion, art, science, is formed. Internet communication today symbolically mediates the process of knowledge and adherence of man to society, it is a phenomenology of cognition, where the intentional object is the person himself.

The means of implementing social networking is the Internet language. The following terms are the synonyms of the Internet language concept, as D. Crystal put it: Weblish (hybrid of 'web' and 'English'), netlingo (net-lingvo,

Internet language), e-talk (electronic talk), tech-speak (technical language), wired-style (wired style), geek-speak, netspeak (Internet language) [10] - these and many other terms are used by American linguists to refer to the language in various spheres of the Internet, and the communicative space of its operation is called computer-mediated communications (computer-mediated communications). We should note that this term is not always used in a unique manner. As a rule, it functions in two values, namely: 1) as a functional type of language; 2) as a communicative environment. In our opinion, it is worth adding the third value: as a virtual reality modeling tool.

Ukrainian researchers are more likely to use the term `Internet language', and call virtual communication, Internet communication, or computer or electronic discourse as computer-mediated means. Some researchers of computer- mediated communication distinguish the concept of 'electronic communication' and 'electronic discourse' considering the latter one more narrow, since it describes the language and speech features of computer 'text communication' that are studied by discursive analysis methods.

C. Thurlow outlines the following structural elements of Internet communication in his articl e Internet and Language'.

Internet is the global communication environment, communicative space;

computer-mediated communication - inter-subjective interaction implemented through the global communicative space;

computer-mediated discourse - an organized speech code that functions online and is differentiated by the use of narratives;

computer-mediated conversation, which from our perspective is close to social psycholinguistic analysis of language. This `conversation' strongly depends on the forms of Internet use - communication format (chat, forum, mail, blog, etc.);

computer-mediated synchronic and asynchronic communication) [8] - communication carried by actors synchronously or commenting a pre-created discourse is stretched in the time frame.

The realization of the virtuality notion is intended to facilitate the acceleration of communication between people as well as the leveling of temporal and spatial boundaries. Due to the peculiarities of the cybersphere, the notion of communication has also changed. Computer-mediated communication combines various possibilities of audio, visual and text communication. The latter one (computer- mediated discourse) is interesting because, due to the lack of non-verbal and paralinguistic means of transmitting information, it is forced to constantly transform in order to increase its own ability to fully transmit the content of messages from the addressee to the addressee, that is, to create discourses. Computer-mediated conversation is what we call oral and written communication in the Internet language. It reflects the personal and social character of a new type of communication. Virtual communication can be synchronous (in the case of text messaging in real time) and asynchronous (when there is a certain time interval between sending a message and receiving a response to it). Social networking combines these types and personalizes the communication process, adding an anthropological factor to it - the user's legend. Separating the content of the network into smaller structures by way of information transfer allows emphasizing the diversity and functionality of this medium. However, as Sh. Wilber notes, «whatever term you call Internet culture, it is still entirely based on the text» [10]. We could hardly disagree with this notion because most humanities studies on the operation of the network language devoted to the methods of forming a network identity and the presentation of the virtual personality are based on the peculiarities of speech processes in the Internet. The works of well- known American psychologist Sheryl Thurkle may work a convincing argument to confirm this thesis. «You can become everything you want. You can completely 'transform' yourself. They do not see your body and cannot make any assumptions about it. They do not hear your accent and also can not make any conclusions about it. Your words are all they can see» [9, p. 83]. The role of textual and metatextual information is particularly important here.

With the advent of high technology, there is an opportunity to speak about the special functional type of language - the language that serves electronic means of communication, to which the Internet and other global electronic networks primarily belong [9, p. 234]. Professor from Oxford D. Crystal was the first to talk about a new sphere of scientific knowledge called Internet linguistics. He defines it as «synchronous language analysis in all types of Internet activities including e-mail, various types of chats and game interactions, a linguistic component of web pages. This branch of linguistics is intended to study new language styles and forms that were formed under the influence of the Internet and other new means of communication, such as, for example, short message service (SMS)» [5, p. 30].

Electronic medium (as D. Crystal calls cyberspace in most of its works) facilitates and at the same time limits our ability to communicate in a way that is fundamentally different from that we apply in `old-fashioned' semiotic situations. Common characteristics that clearly distinguished between oral and written communication seem relative. The evolution of netspeak (Internet language) demonstrates the serious relationship that exists between the communication medium and the goals and expectations of its users. As a result, a new type of communication appeared (written speech). One of the principles of using natural language in the web space proclaims: «Write as you say» [7].

Researchers of asynchronous chat groups B. Davis and P. Brouard believe that «electronic discourse assumes that what you read will very often be expressed as you are told about it. This means that the addressee writes the way he communicates in his everyday life» [6, p. 2]. Thus, the writing form of the spoken language, which is most commonly found on the Internet, performs here two main functions: 1) the function of reproducing the pronunciation when creating a written text; 2) the function of listening comprehension while reading.

By comparing oral and written speech, D. Crystal recognizes between two main characteristics that distinguish between communication in the web space and real life: 1) the lack of synchronous exchange of information («there is no such way in which the recipient will be able to respond to our message at a time while we are still printing it, for the simple reason that he does not know whether he will receive the message at all. Accordingly, there is no way for a speaker to find out how clearly the recipient understood the content of his message and whether additional information would be required» [5, p. 30]); 2) the rhythm of interpersonal interaction on the Internet is much slower than in the `live' speech, and cannot convey most of the important properties of oral speech.

D. Crystal notes that despite the simplicity of the assertion «people write as they say,» attention is not often paid to such a question - «which people?» In the past, the jargon of Internet users had a significant impact on the netspeak when the network itself was still an information privilege, not commonplace. But what will happen to the Internet when the number of users expands, as well as the number of languages presented in the network?» [5, p. 25]. Although the author asked this question back in 2004 his conclusions on this issue remain relevant: any attempt to characterize the Internet language on the whole or only in some cases of its application is necessarily confronted with the phenomenon of the inconsistency of any technology.

David Crystal offers four areas for studying the existence of language on the Internet: 1) sociolinguistics; 2) stylistic; 3) research in the field of applied linguistics; 4) educational.

The first direction, according to D. Crystal, provides a retrospective review of the relationship between a social change and the functioning of language. The creation of a printing press in the fifteenth century, telephone in the nineteenth century, and radio broadcasts in the twentieth century took place was not only one more stage in the development of technology, but the progress in improving and expanding the boundaries of human communication. The Internet as a new sphere of language existence gives the opportunity to move away from the overly formalized nature of expressions, erasing grammatical, stylistic, spelling and semantic boundaries. The content expression of linguistic unit changes, the new meaning of one word generates the development of other lexical meanings, semantics expands and changes, new words are created. In English, this process was so vividly traced back in the Middle Ages, and the formation of Standard English was almost fatal for it in the 18th century.

One of the reasons for focusing attention on the stylistic research is the revival of writing a diary in blogging. The potential of creative energy that is being realized in it differs significantly from the spirit of sentimentalism and romanticism, which at one time led to the emergence of a diary as a genre phenomenon of literary activity. Similarly, users' legends are largely determined by the language, words and sayings they use when communicating with other actors.

Perspective of applied Internet linguistics development, according to D. Crystal, may have an ambivalent potential -- both positive and negative. Undoubtedly, multi-lingualism is characteristic for the existence of language in the virtual space is positive. As time passes, more and more linguistic communities realize themselves in computer-mediated communication, which enables the potential for progress in two aspects: firstly, in documenting the ethnological material that comes to the teens through the Internet, who are potential parents of a new generation of speakers and, accordingly, the main linguistic critics. We have a kind of struggle for language survival here. If the interest disappears in this category of network users then the language itself can be considered lost [5, p. 21]; and secondly, the Internet gives a chance for any language to revive giving it speakers that are separated by real physical space the opportunity to unite in the virtual space and, thus, continue to develop their native language. The role of education in the development of the appropriate disciplinary paradigm of Internet linguistics is directly related to the need to preserve the basic linguistic norms. Not all areas of language development in the global network are acceptable for it, because the negative influence on language can also be made by the personality, the native speaker.

Failing to comply with spelling, syntactic and other requirements of the literary language is characteristic to «human-to-human» communication at the level of spoken language. Another feature of it is the significant role of non- linguistic means of communication, but, as noted above, the text Internet communication does not allow them to be directly transmitted. For this purpose, the users use a number of other linguistic innovations in the cyberspace, for example, the use of character symbols not typical of the written language (the most common are emoticons - a semiotic graphic unit that can be inserted using the keyboard); uncodified use of certain graphic characters (for example, dots, the excess of which is commonly used to express thinking).

The above is intended to compensate for the shortcomings that the Internet has comparing with the «live» communication. It is worth noting that these innovations are typical of all the languages represented in the World Wide Web. It can be considered one of the negative manifestations of the globalization process, which leads to the standardization of language, narrows the spectrum of the expressive capabilities of the natural language and, consequently, distortion of the established logic schemes.

Consequently, according to the general meaning of the D. Crystal concept, the linguosphere must be a connecting link between the sociosphere and the cybersphere. In this situation, another function of the language as interpreter plays a decisive role.

Such physical processes as feelings, needs and sensations are introduced into it in the structure of linguistic intersubjectiveness, and internal episodes or experiences turn into intentional content: acts of knowledge - in the statement, and the needs and feelings - in normative content (commandments and values). In one of his works J. Habermas offers a communication model that can be applied to the social network medium. Language communication has a dual structure: communication with regard to the propositional content is possible only on condition of simultaneous metacommunication in relation to interpersonal relations. This expresses the human limitation of the cognitive capabilities and motives of language intersubjectivity. However, this metacommunication is a process of forming mutual trust.

According to the theory of A. Yong, J. Habermas does not take into account the fact that the meanings transmitted by metacommunication are comprehended in discourse going beyond the limits of the symbolic ones [11, p. 72]. The symbolism of discursive aspects of communication (related to reason) can not be separated from the semiotic or figurative aspects of utterances (which are related to the unconsciousness, body, and emotions).

Contrary to the rationalist conception of J. Habermas, A. Yong offers a more emotional concept, in which there is a place for linguistic interaction to form a feeling that accompanies and motivates the appearance of all utterances the transitional links between the sociosphere and the cyber-sphere. Tones of voice, facial expressions, gestures, use of irony, implied sense, and various forms of speech, all serve to give implicit implications in terms of attractiveness or neglect, confrontation, or agreement in real discussions. The speakers not only tell what they have in mind but they pronounce it with excitement, anger, offense or otherwise, and such emotional characteristics of communicative contexts should not be viewed as non-prelinguistic» [11, p. 72].

Reflexivity should include aesthetic and hermeneutic dimensions; as well as logical self-control, reflexivity involves intuition and imagination that rely on feelings. The assumption that open-mindedness contributes to non- emotional, abstract dialogues is also false. Impartiality points out, as S. Benhabib observes, more on ethical honesty than on the non-empathic unbodiliness of judgments [2, p. 8283]. According to S. Chambers whose vision is formed on the basis of I. Kant's political philosophy, open-mindedness is a part of the requirement for an ideal role, demanding participants to disregard and try to assess the situation from the standpoint and prospects of the Other [4, p. 101].

Interpretation forms the difference between the subjectivity of thought, will, desire and reluctance, on the one hand, and the claim to the universality of statements and norms, on the other one. Integrity means the objectivity of knowledge and the legitimacy of real norms; both guarantee the constitutive social life world community (Gemeinsamkeit). The structures of linguistic intersubjectiveness are equally constitutive both for experience and instrumental action and for attitudes and communicative actions. In order these structures to be correctly applied and interpreted, the necessary discursive pragmatics of social network communication is required that will analyze the verbal material and the strong and weak links formed on it, based on a common system of norms and values, as well as patterns of language communication aimed at achieving consensus.

References

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