CC BY
28
УДК 800
Е.Г. Андреева
канд. филол. наук, доцент г. Санкт-Петербург, РФ Email: e.andreeva@yahoo.com
СОКРАЩЕНИЯ В РУССКОМ И АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ: ПОПЫТКА КРОСС-КУЛЬТУРНОГО АНАЛИЗА
Аннотация
Разного рода сокращения не новое явление для многих языков, однако наиболее широко они используются в текстовых сообщениях и социальных сетях. Некоторые из них постепенно утрачивают свою значимость, хотя иные закрепились в языках и, возможно, даже влияют на них. Сравнение сокращений, используемых в русском и английском языках, позволяет сделать определенные выводы о культурно-специфичных и гендерных предпочтениях. Представленный в данной статье анализ опроса 115 информантов - носителей русского и английского языков, выявляет основные тенденции в использовании сокращений и демонстрирует сходства и различия двух культур в этом отношении.
Ключевые слова:
сокращение, консонантизм, сопоставительный анализ, гендерные различия, частотность
Ekaterina Andreeva Ph.D. (philology), associate professor St. Petersburg State University St.Petersburg, Russia
ABBREVIATIONS IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN: AN ATTEMPT OF CROSSCULTURAL ANALYSIS
Abstract
Abbreviations used in text messages and social networks have been widely used in many languages of the world. They have already gone a long way from infancy to full bloom and are starting to lose their appeal slowly coming out of fashion. Still, the comparison between English and Russian users of contracted words and abbreviations can reveal some culture-specific tendencies and gender-coloured preferences. The analysis of the questionnaires filled in by 115 respondents (speakers of English and Russian) is presented in the paper, demonstrating both convergencies and divergencies between the two cultures.
Key words:
Abbreviations, consonantism, contrastive analysis, gender differences, frequency.
Starting Point
Abbreviations, particularly those formed with the help of consonantism, can be historically traced back to the beginnings of the telegraph, when it was impossible to «send over the wires» punctuation marks. This «inability» resulted in endowing us with such words as тчк (tchk - full stop), зпт (zpt - comma), etc. A true boom in the development of abbreviations, however, began with the advent of the mobile phone messaging, rather expensive at first, when its users did their best to save money by bringing the length of the text message to a minimum. As time passed, a specific language of the internet and 'mobile' communication developed into a form of a sub-language, not always understandable for those who were (and are) not in. At some point, this language became so widely used that it even acquired the status of a commonly accepted form of speech and fell into the focus of attention of linguists who dedicated to it not only articles describing some aspects of the language, but also collective monographs fully describing it [Kakorina, 2007; Akhapkina, Rakhilina, 2014] and even entire books [Crystall, 2001] in which the
term "Netspeak" was coined.
At present, though, with mobile phones becoming cheaper and services of providers more and more affordable, its position as a widely used language seems to have been seriously shaken.
Aim and Methods of Analysis
The objective of this paper is to examine and demonstrate the current state of affairs in what concerns the usage of abbreviations by interviewing native speakers of Russian and English. The target age group is young people between 20 and 25 years with a similar background (students). The total number of the interviewed amounts to 115, with 34 of them being Russians and 81 British or American students. Within each language, gender differences in the usage of abbreviations were taken into consideration. However, this part of the analysis was seriously impaired for several reasons among which is the fact that females significantly outnumber males (the Russian-speaking group is composed of 26 females and only 8 males), on the one hand, as well as the fact that only in sheer 16 cases of the English-speaking informants their sex turned out to be identifiable, on the other. Therefore, it is possible to speak of only very general tendencies which are not necessarily a true reflection of the real state of affairs.
The questionnaires for the both languages include 26 items each, all of which can, according to the Internet sources, be regarded as the most frequently used. The interviewed were asked to mark each of the items as 'never', 'seldom' or 'frequently' used and to add those which were lacking on the list but are often used by them. The Russian speakers filled in both the Russian and English questionnaires as they more often than not use English abbreviations in texting.
Russian Abbreviations
The most popular abbreviations in Russian are ок (ok), норм (normal), че (what), мб (maybe), оч (very), спс (thanks). They nearly equally regularly appear in males' and females' questionnaires (88% and 77% respectively). The items which are used by about a half of the respondents (40-60%%) are пож/пжлст please), ваще (generally, totally, completely), лол (Cyrillic transliteration of 'lol'), что-нить (something). Here it seems that пож is more characteristic of women's speech (65% of females use it compared to 50% of males). Hardly ever used with no more than three mentions are кста (by the way), прив (hi!), слу (listen), смо3 (look), with men using only прив and слу.
The abbreviations added to the list totaling 26 are mainly occasional, individual rather than common and widely used with the exception of омг (again - Cyrillic transliteration of the English 'omg1), хз (who knows), лан (ok, I agree), whose frequency varies from 8% to 14%.
What can be inferred from analyzing the data collected seems to prove that Russian women use abbreviations more often and with wider variations than their male counterparts, though the difference between the gender groups is not that considerable - on average, female students use 12,5 abbreviations, while male students use slightly over 11,5. Clearly demonstrated in the material surveyed is that Russians avoid using numbers as parts of abbreviations (смо3 - is the only one). Of note also is that ок (okay), имхо (imho), лол (lol) are fully absorbed by the younger generation into their Russian language. Finally, a general tendency can be seen in the way many of the abbreviations are created - they mostly represent a vernacular form of speech characterized by a careless way of pronouncing words (ваще - вообще, лан - ладно, че - что, чего, etc.). Unfortunately, such abbreviations might perpetuate this lower-class pronunciation and contribute to its fixing in spoken Russian.
English Abbreviations (Speakers of Russian)
The analysis is based on the data from 26 respondents since eight (out of the total of 34 Russian speakers) claimed not to be using English abbreviations in their text messages or Internet chats. Predictably, among the most widely used items are OK, OMG, WTF, with 75% of the respondents using them. It turns out that women use OK and WTF more often than men, while the latter appeal to OMG (which sounds rather 'female') more often than the former. Such forms as ASAP, IDK, bc, IMHO, def are used by 40-60%% and can be called gender-neutral. An interesting feature is that men seem to be more polite in texting than women - 88% and 77%, respectively. F2F, CUL8R, 2nite, BFN, TTYL, AML can hardly be called wide-spread (one or two cases). Additions to the list amount to 31 forms, however, none of them is 'massively' used.
English Abbreviations (Speakers of English)
The overall pattern is as follows - OK, JK, IDK, LOL, ASAP, WTF, OMG, bc are widely used (over 75%),
ILU, IMHO, G2G, TNXand tmrw are characterized by 40-60%%, while the frequency of CUL8R, F2F, AML, G2B, BFN is very low. In this distribution of their preferences both Russian- and English-speaking young people are quite similar despite several discrepancies. The English-speaking respondents have added nearly twice as many abbreviations as Russians (60 items) and demonstrated gender-specific tendencies - ЮС (78% f - 28% m), LMK (78% f - 14% m), def (89% f - 28% m), ILU (44% f - 28% m). Of importance is a remark that capital letters should be avoided ("All caps is often seen as aggressive, or excited. I think most of my peers - I am 21 - usually use lowercase").
Comparison and Conclusions
A marked difference is that the English-speaking young people (1) use abbreviations more actively that their Russian counterparts, and (2) the list of the items used is noticeably wider as well. Females tend to employ these forms more regularly than males, with the gap being wider between the English speakers than between the Russians.
According to the English material, IDC (Idon't care), LMK (let me know), ILU, def, OMG are more feminine, while the Russian data characterize OMG as a more masculine word. On the other hand, both Russian and English-speaking women use WTF more frequently than men.
As for the patterns of derivation, in Russian the prevailing abbreviations are formed by 'stem-cutting', partial elimination of consonants and/or vowels, whereas among the English forms the dominating models are complete elimination of consonants and compounds consisting of the first letters of the words composing them.
In both languages figures and numbers have virtually stopped being used.
Finally, the analysis reveals that the list of English abbreviations is richer, they are more actively used than the Russian ones, let alone the fact that the Russian language of social networks and text messages largely depends and thrives on English.
Acknowledgements
I want to express my deep gratitude to Anna Belkina, Elena Dolghih, Olga Ivanova, Mariana Petyaskina and all the students who spent their time filling my questionnaires for their invaluable contribution because without this help the paper would have never been written.
References
1. Kakorina E.V. Yazyk internet-kommunikacii // Yazyk massovoi I mezhlichnostnoi kommunikacii. Moscow: MediaMir, 2007.
2. Sovremennyi russkiy yazyk v internete (Yazykovye izmenenia v zerkale interneta)/ ed. Akhapkina Y. E and Rakhilina E.V. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskih kultur, 2014.
3. Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
© Андреева Е.Г., 2020
УДК 82
М.С. Штейман
канд. филол. наук ЕГУ им. И.А. Бунина,
г. Елец, РФ E-mail: shteiman.marina@mail.ru
СВОЕОБРАЗИЕ НОВЕЛЛИСТИКИ А. СЕРАФИМОВИЧА В КОНТЕКСТЕ ЛИТЕРАУРНОГО ПРОЦЕССА 20-Х ГОДОВ
Аннотация
В статье рассматриваются тенденции развития «малой прозы» в советской литературе пореволюционной поры. Особое внимание уделено характеристике художественного мастерства Серафимовича-новеллиста.
