Valeria Orakbaeva
Khmelnytskyi National University
Scientific Supervisor: PhD, O. V. Tarasova
LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF MODERN MEDIA LANGUAGE
The article is devoted to the linguistic features of modern media language. Modern media is a rich playground for experimenting, creating new words and repurposing old ones, it is interactive and potentially hypertextual. Language is, and always has been ever-evolving and remains as strong and infallible as it always has been.
Keywords: modern media language, interactivity, hypertextuality, visualization, borrowing, communication, appropriation.
Media language is one of the most important objects of linguistic research. By definition, a modern media language is а “planetary stream of consciousness”, which contains elements of different functional styles. This stream of consciousness is created by traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television and radio), online versions of print publications or radio and TV channel and electronic network media. Nowadays, modern information field also includes the “citizen journalism”, which takes a form of moblogging or blogging. These relatively new forms of mass communication – moblog (mobile phone log – diary on a mobile phone) and blog (derived from web log it means an internet diary) – occupy an important place in a system of mass communication of the XXI century.
Thanks to the development of electronic media, particularly the Internet, media language acquired such characteristics as interactivity, the ability of creolization and hypertextuality. Any text can be potentially hypertextual, because it has the ability to spread by adding new information links. Online text lives a special life, as an opportunity to get information that is interesting for readers appears almost instantly, in the course of reading. Therefore, the potential hypertextual deployment is a characteristic feature of today’s Internet speech. And this is not without reason. New, electronic media have an impact on linguistic characteristics of the text. Information space produced by the media is very wide.
The emergence of the internet and the consequential array of social media networks have, without doubt, resulted in an exponential increase in new types of written language: blogs, tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts. There’s no denying that social media has had a drastic impact on the sheer volume of people we are now able to communicate with, it’s also had an impact on the frequency with which we are able to communicate with them. This has led to us being exposed to a myriad of different personalities, perspectives, and approaches when we use social media to communicate. With the exception of social media professionals and academic journalists, the majority of what is written by the general public on social media is not edited, supervised or checked to ensure that proper use of language is taken into consideration. Information space produced by the media is very wide. It is the whole world, native and alien, speaking different languages. Then how this world is reflected in the language of the media?
One of the most notable ways that social media has influenced, is through the appropriation of existing vocabulary. Words that had existing meanings, have now been given other meanings in an online context, which then spills over into verbal communication. Years ago, if somebody said the word “wall” to you, you might think of the ones in your house, or the ones outside in the street. However, in a social media context the word “wall” refers to the homepage of your social media profile, where you can share aspects of your life or work in a public forum. A few other words which have been re-purposed for social media include:
- Tablet, which is used to refer to portable screens.
- Troll, which is a term used to describe an internet user who seeks attention by making outrageous or unreasonable comments about something or someone.
- Stream(ing), which is the transmission of data as a steady continuous flow.
- Catfish, which is a term used to refer to an internet user who poses as someone other than themselves online.
The internet has become one of the influences of the English language in recent times, and along with appropriating existing vocabulary, it has given life to a plethora of new words and phrases. A few years ago, nobody had heard of the terms “unfriend”, “selfie” “fleek” or “emoji” however these words have trickled down from social media, and into our day to day conversations. As for emoji, they have developed into a pseudo-language of its own. An emoji is a graphic symbol, ideogram, that represents not only facial expressions, but also concepts and ideas, such as celebration, weather, vehicles and buildings, food and drink, animals and plants, or emotions, feelings, and activities. Emojis are used on a daily basis on almost all social media sites.
Some of these terms have even made it into the Oxford Dictionary, ones that have, include: YOLO (You Only Live Once) along with compound words such as “Craptacular” and “Amazeballs”, not to mention the recent social media trend of identifying high-profile couples by combining their first names to form a blend word e.g. Brangelina. Alongside these words are a vast array of social media specific acronyms, ranging from the almost universally known “LOL” (Laughing Out Loud), “DM”, (Direct Message) and “FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out) and “TBT” (Throwback Thursday). The speed at which new vocabulary is introduced online, used, quickly over-used and then discarded is phenomenal and has never been so rapid. An example of terms that would now be considered ‘antique’ text speak on social media are: OMG, TXT, GR8, M8 and L8R.
Moreover, there is a fashion for borrowing, and in this case we are getting synonyms of already existing symbols of objects, events, concepts. For example, the endowment fund (trust fund), fake, entertainment, casting, publics (public pages in a social network), skydiver (acrobat), autochthonous (indigenous), tickets, aftershock (repeated seismic shock), meltdown (core meltdown of a nuclear reactor), coffee break, volunteer etc. The ability to create an inclusive and multidimensional information media, to produce a continuous media stream is also categorical to the media of the XXI century.
Thus, the modern journalistic speech is quite diverse in terms of stratification, content, axiology, stylistic characteristics. It includes both traditional media – print journalism, radio, television, and their Internet versions, as well as e-zines and a number of blogs equal to media. The media language of our century is interactive, dialogical and potentially hypertextual, it demonstrates stylistic diversity depending on the social orientation of the publication, and is issued in certain cultural and linguistic forms. They bring such qualities as polyphony, polycodeness, visualization.
Media speech is anthropocentric, reflects the author’s worldview, interpretation of events and phenomena, it is directed not to average citizen, but to representatives at least of a particular stratum, the individual. Media discourse is the basis for the development of modern language. It creates new meanings that are broadcast through the channels of mass communication. It reflects the changes in the environment and fixes them in the public consciousness. We can say that media speech is not only the most important normative factor, but a vast field of interaction of different cultures and interests, thus forming national culture.
References
- Jean A. Diana L. (2004). New Media Language. Routledge.
- Miriam B. The Influence of Modern Electronic Media on the Usage of the English Language. https://www.grin.com/document/468191
- Nathan Heid. The Evolution of The Language Used In Social Media. https://www.grin.com/document/356371
- Hermione Foster. How is social media changing the English language? https://www.languageservicesdirect.co.uk/social-media-changing-english-language/