Linguistic and communicative aspect of social networks: mechanisms of mutual influence

Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University (Odesa, Ukraine)

The article describes the main aspects of the influence of social networks on language and communication. Emphasis is placed on simplifying language practices during online communication in the conditions of globalization of the information space. Social networks, which have partially replaced live communication, have created a virtual world within which those who communicate with each other have a persuasive influence on each other. As a result of communication in social networks, language discourse undergoes radical changes to simplification, which indicates the possibility of a threat to the further development and preservation of the norms of the literary language. However, social networks allow users to communicate in real time, giving the advantage of quick messaging and quick responses. This allows for quick communication and instant feedback. Social networks give preference to communicating with a much larger audience than in ordinary personal communication, which leads to the interweaving of real and virtual social life. Users of the virtual world can find new friends, colleagues, like-minded people from different countries and cultures. Social networks demonstrate a new reality of our immanent existence, which reflects the mosaic of thoughts, interests and desires of network communication participants, form a “virtual identity” , which affects the creation of a modern social communicative space and the construction of a new image of an info person in the world. Thanks to the efficiency, creativity, realization of texts, archiveability, freedom of speech and interactivity of network communication, the use of social networks is a serious competition to official media. Social networks are an integrated part of the new virtual social environment.

МОВНО-КОМУНІКАТИВНИЙ АСПЕКТ СОЦІАЛЬНИХ МЕРЕЖ: МЕХАНІЗМИ ВЗАЄМОВПЛИВУ

У статті описано основні аспекти впливу соціальних мереж на мову й комунікацію. Закцентовано на спрощенні мовних практик під час онлайн-спілкування в умовах глобалізації інформаційного простору. Соціальні мережі, які частково замінили живе спілкування, сконструювали віртуальний світ у межах якого ті хто комунікують між собою здійснюють персуазивний вплив один на одного. У результаті спілкування в соціальних мережах мовний дискурс зазнає кардинальних змін до спрощення, що свідчить про можливість загрози для подальшого розвитку й збереження норм літературної мови. Однак, соціальні мережі дозволяють користувачам спілкуватися в режимі реального часу, надаючи перевагу швидко обмінюватися повідомленнями та хутко реагувати на них. Це дозволяє забезпечити жваву комунікацію та отримувати миттєвий зворотній зв'язок. Соціальні мережі надають перевагу комунікувати зі значно більшою авдиторією, ніж у звичайному особистому спілкуванні, що призводить до переплетіння реального та віртуального соціального життя. Користувачі віртуального світу можуть знаходити нових друзів, колег, однодумців з різних країн та культур. Соціальні мережі демонструють нову реальність нашого іманентного буття, яка відображає мозаїчність думок, інтересів і бажань учасників мережевого спілкування, формують «віртуальну ідентичність», яка впливає на створення сучасного соціального комунікативного простору та на конструювання нового образу інфолюдиниу світі. Саме завдяки оперативності, креативності, креалізованості текстів, архівабельності, свободі слова й інтерактивності мережевої комунікації використання соцмереж становить серйозну конкуренцію офіційним медіа. Соціальні мережі - це інтегрована частина нового віртуального соціального середовища.

Modern social networks are a kind of global coordination centre of social relations, which is capable of compensating the communication vacuum, regulating information processes in the virtual space, which is a special feature of the development of the social communications system. In today's globalized world, the Internet has become an integral part of the communicative activity of an individual and society in general. Social networks have become an important part of it, as active platforms for business, education, science, and leisure, on the basis of which specific forms of interpersonal and social connections have been further developed. The World Wide Web has provided technical opportunities for online communication so that it is easy to find people with similar interests, opinions, and views on life. They have become a kind of “.. .instrument with the help of which a large number of users of the global network get additional opportunities in communication and dissemination of information” (Kohan, 2014: 62).

The scientific study ofthe language-communicative aspect of social networks and their mutual influence is based on structural-content, comparative approaches that allow identifying typological-semantic features. Since the study of the popularity of social networks lies in an interdisciplinary plane, in the process of studying their features, general scientific methods of classification, a descriptive method, as well as the Google Trends method, which is a modern tool for marketing research, were applied.

At the current stage of development, humanitarian studies successfully uses the concepts and terms of communicative studies, which gives reason to associate it with social communications, in particular, communication in social networks. Under the influence of social networks, there is a change in written communication and a new way of communication is created, which demonstrates an oral type of conversational style.

The possibility of anonymity, implementation of self-presentation, the desire to “be heard”, “be different”, “be yourself' led to an increase in the emotional and expressive background of online communication. Therefore, in order to give their own messages an emotional colour and expression, in anticipation of the same open and, most importantly, frank reaction from the recipients, communicators in social networks use stylistically reduced vocabulary: jargonisms, slangisms, colloquialisms, neologisms, the use of abbreviations, the use of smileys, memes, emoticons, and other non-verbal resources. The emotional nature of messages in social media is indicated in writing and by appropriate punctuation marks, which leads to the frequent use of exclamatory and interrogative sentences, mostly with several exclamation marks or questions. Such expressive messages contain representations and describe real fragments of reality, which the user singles out as significant for his virtual perception ofthe world. Most of all, users of social networks strive to create their own unique info image, which should be attractive, outrageous, and unique, therefore they express their communication style quite creatively with verbal and non-verbal resources.

We believe that the lack of clear rules regarding the use of norms of literary language during communication in social networks, namely censorship, is the cause and effect of the formation of new unique language units - neologisms and slangisms. The opinions of linguists regarding slang differ: some believe that “slang spoils and pollutes the literary language, that it is a parasitic layer of vocabulary that must be fought against. Others, on the contrary, see in it an element that gives the language liveliness and imagery, contributes to its enrichment and improvement” (Sinyuta, 2018: 60). The information space contributes to the unification of language and communication processes and leads to the development of bilingual relations, brevity, brevity, which directly affect the virtual language culture.

One of the distinctive features of online communication is the emergence of a large number of colloquial neologisms. The researchers admit that “when a new socio-cultural phenomenonappears, users themselves form a lexicon. Accordingly, dictionaries of various sociolinguistic orientations immediately appear” (Chemerkin, 2009: 46). In particular, most of the suggested words come from social networks. Thus, it can be assumed that users of social networks not only create new lexical structures, but also bear the social responsibility of spreading new words. In particular, every day we hear “googling”, etc., which means to find certain information on the Google network - one of the search applications; “post” - write a message in social networks; “to like” - to like something in social networks; “take a selfie” - take a certain type of photo, a self-portrait, taken with the help of a smartphone or iPhone camera. Words such as “follower” (an active user of a social network who follows the status updates or news feed of another user) and “user” (a person who is registered on a certain website or platform and uses its services), “influencer” (a person who has many followers and an active audience on social media, uses his authority to influence the behaviour, thoughts, and actions of his followers), “stories” (a short video or photos that appear on top of news feeds in social networks for a limited time), “vibe” (a short expression that means mood or emotional state) - entered the active layer of our vocabulary precisely from the Internet space and social networks.

In the modern conditions of popularization of social networks as a communication platform, the importance of the norms of the literary language as a way of interpersonal communication and community communication is gradually changing. “Given that network communities in the Internet environment are informal and involve relative freedom of content and literary style, any regulation of their functioning seems, on the one hand, inappropriate” (Tarasenko, 2017: 456). The language of social networks is a reflection of the real speech situation with a significant number of discrepancies between the literary language and the actual speech of users. The popularization of the simplified attitude of users to the norms of the literary language and the predominance of non-normative features inherent in spoken speech can lead to illiteracy of the individual and society in general.

It is worth noting that the presence in modern gadgets, smartphones, etc. of various applications and programs for automatically checking the grammar of the text, reduces the need to acquire knowledge independently, which in general lowers the level of mastery of the literary language, the text design suffers, and speech acts become more fragmented.

However, the language of social networks has its own unique features that distinguish it from traditional forms of communication. Here are some characteristic features that should be highlighted:

Smiles and facial expressions: :) :( :D ;).

Gesture emoticons: \o/ (joy, triumph), /facepalm (facepalm to face - disappointment, dissatisfaction).

Emoticons to show love and romance: <3 (heart), :-* (kiss).

Emoticons to show sadness or disappointment: :-( (sad face), :'( (crying)

Emoticons to show activity or state: \m/ (rock guitarist gesture), \o/ (joyful raising of hands).

“This is Fine” (an image of a dog sitting in a burning room saying that everything is fine!).

“Pepe the Frog” (the image of Pepe the frog, which has become a symbol of various emotions).

“Expanding Brain” (a sequence of images showing the development of thoughts from simple to complex).

“Surprised Pikachu” (an image of Pikachu looking surprised).

It is also important to understand the concept of communicative behaviour, which we understand in our scientific research as a certain way of interaction between communicators and recipients in the communication process. It covers all types of behaviour that affect perception, understanding, and communication between communicators. Furthermore, it is significant that communicative behaviour includes not only the verbal aspect (words, speech), but also non-verbal elements (gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, etc.). The communicative behaviour of social media users can vary depending on various factors, but the main features of such behaviour include the following:

In order to study in more detail the dynamics of the popularity of social networks, because there are many of them in the world, you can use the Google Trends application - this is a free tool from the Google company that allows users to research and analyse the popularity and trends of Google searches around the world. With the help of Google Trends, you can study topics of interest to users, find new keywords for search engine optimization of sites, analyse competitors and much more.

Google Trends allows users to compare the popularity of queries across time periods, localizations and languages, as well as receive advice on related queries. It also provides graphs and data visualizations that allow users to understand trends and changes in requests over time.

Google Trends can be a useful tool for market research, market analysis and search engine optimization. It allows you to explore trends in search keywords and topics.

In particular, we selected keywords for search, namely social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, in order to compare the dynamics of the popularity of social networks in the world over the last year. Therefore, we will highlight the following results (Fig. 1).

In general, Instagram is blue, Facebook is red, and Twitter is yellow. We see that according to Google queries, the most popular social network in the world over the last year is Facebook, Instagram is in second place, and Twitter is the least popular social network. This is at the request of users (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. The level of interest in social networks in the world

Fig. 4. The level of interest in social networks in the world

Conclusions

social network online communication discourse

The language of social networks is often different from the standard literary language used in official documents, books and formal communications. This is due to the specific context and nature of communication in social networks, where people usually communicate quickly, exchange ideas and express emotions. Such phenomena as abbreviations of words, use of emojis, symbols, neologisms and slangisms are common in social networks. This way of communication is more informal, and some norms of literary language may be violated. However, it is worth noting that social networks are not a platform for standard literary language. They represent a kind of space where language norms can vary and adapt to the specific needs and context of users. Language norms on social networks also depend on the community or application in which they are used. For example, non-commercial forums or academic groups may have stricter requirements for language accuracy and standards. Due to the efficiency, creativity, realizability, archiveability, freedom of speech and interactivity of network communication, the use of social networks is a serious competition to official media.

In general, although social media language may differ from literary language, this does not threaten the norms of literary language, as these two forms of language exist in different contexts and are used for different purposes. It is important to understand the context and adapt to the way of communication in social networks. Social networks are not only means of mass communication, but also important elements of the mechanism of construction of linguistic and communicative space in the conditions of modern society, which perform a number of functions, creating a value system for their existence.

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