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Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie)
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ISSN 1994-4160
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2023. 19(1): 51-60
DOI: 10.13187/me.2023.1.51 https://me.cherkasgu.press
Contextual Variability of Responsive Utterances in Blog Interaction Compared to Face-to-Face Communication
Inna Kovtunenko a , *, Igor Kudryashov a, Hadi Bak b, Andrey Narushevitch c
a Southern Federal University, Russian Federation b Ataturk University, Turkey
c Rostov State University of Economics, Russian Federation
Abstract
In comparison with face-to-face communication, the respondent's contribution to the generating of the blog text is realized on a deferred basis. The blogger and his/her interlocutors' interaction models reveal similar features with the face-to-face dialogic patterns. Compared with face-to-face communication, the dialogue in blog interaction has a more multidimensional structure. The respondent reacts with a message that contains more than one illocution, and the question-and-answer unities are characterized by a three-step scheme, since the final message is absent in the majority of contexts. On joint unfolding of the blog, the interlocutors implement many communicative strategies that are characteristic of face-to-face dialogic interaction. The system architectonics of the massage producing and transmitting plays the essential role in the implementing the effective communication models. The technical blogosphere support and the relevant communicative context largely determine the compensatory possibilities of "docking" stimuli and reactions against the general background of the whole variety of face-to-face communications. The repertoire of communicative strategies that acquire the essential importance in the process of overcoming the problems of establishing and maintaining reactions in blog communication is determined. The current aspects of designing the interfaces of blogging platforms that influence the pragmatic contexts of reactive utterances are discussed.
Keywords: reactive post, explicit and implicit reaction, stimulus and response, face-to-face communication, blog text, communicative strategy, blog platform interface.
1. Introduction
The fundamental definitions of interpersonal communication are based on the concept of the respondent's reactive contribution (Capella, 2017; Flanagin, 2017; Hess, Mazer, 2017; Laskova, Lazarev, Kudryashov, 2021; Walther, 2017). The phenomenon of interpersonal communication is characterized in terms of "phatic relations" in which dialogue is a jointly created in the discursive action format. Communicative relations are structured by interlocutors' mutual intentions. So, bloggers realize the intention to convey meaning to respondents, and the basis of the respondents' discursive activity is interpretive intentions. In this regard, the communicative relationship between the blogger and the respondents is the essential prerequisite for interpersonal communication.
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: vkovtunenko@yandex.ru (I. Kovtenenko)
51
One of the striking structurally determined characteristics of the pragmatic blog architectonics is the possibility for the respondent to react in a delayed manner to stimuli initiated by the blogger and other users (Kovtunenko, Kudryashov, 2019). The interlocutors exchange messages, as a rule, not on a momentary basis, but taking into account the time distance: the stimulus is detailed, supported or refuted at the moment of connecting the reacting interlocutor, which does not always coincide with the moment of the initial information realization. As a result, the response to the stimulus (the reactive post) is not always in the information initiator's current focus: users asynchronously connect to the messaging system, which systematically forms a coherent blog text.
The concept of interpersonal communication appears to be the optimal research basis for understanding how explicit and implicit reactive posts, implemented in the format of blogging platforms, influence the interpretation of stimulating bloggers' messages (Kurkimbayeva et al., 2020: 461). Realizing reactive posts with a certain degree of explicitness/implicitness, the users actively interact with stimulating content, enter into communicative relations with its senders. We claim that in the format of communication on blogging platforms, these relationships are initiated by the predicted interaction of the stimulus senders, which refers to the expectations of involving potential participants into the exchange of dict and modus information.
The purpose of this article is to determine the pragmatic structure of the response message in the blog text and on this basis to create a typology of reactive posts taking into account their explicit/implicit expression.
2. Materials and methods
The pragmatic structure specifics of reacting messages in blog texts are revealed based on the comparison of reactions to a stimulus in face-to-face dialogue, which is characterized by the oral register. The statistical method of research is extensively used for:
- the collected corpus of Russian-language blog fragments forming integral dialogical unities;
- surveys of Internet users who have their own blog and regularly participate in commenting on other bloggers' posts (the questionnaire included the following questions:
- Do you check the respondents' reading of stimulating messages in your blog?
- Do you record the total number of readings of stimulating messages by respondents in your
blog?
- What stimuli do explicit and implicit reacting posts receive in your blog?
- What technical extensions are your blog characterized by?
256 students enrolled in bachelor and master's degree programs in humanities (linguistic and sociological specialties) at the Southern Federal University participated in the survey. Of these, 71 % were male, and 29 % were female between the ages of 17 and 28. However, gender, age and professional specifics of discursive activity in the blogosphere were not taken into account in our study. The research reflects statistical data obtained on the material of blog texts revealing sports topics (91.2 % of respondents who participated in the survey, lead and read blogs on this particular topic). We plan to use the data collected from blogs on other topics for further research.
3. Discussion
Reacting posts are interpreted in terms of the expected communicative flow, implying the addressee's intention to enter into an information exchange with the respondent (Arroyo, Yilmaz, 2018; Galikova Tolnaiova, 2019; Xu, Yu, 2018). This expectation underlies the subsequent communication unfolding and the interpretation of the results with which communication ends. When the addressee expects a response to his stimulating messages, he/she projects the positive self-presentation.
Addressers expect reacting posts in order to evaluate such communicative parameters as:
- has their message been received;
- whether their communicative goals have been realized (Jianqiang et al., 2017; Kang et al., 2018; Treem et al., 2020; Zeng, 2017).
The conducted empirical studies confirm the importance of reacting posts for blog communication processes and their results.
After receiving reacting posts, the interlocutors engage additional cognitive processes that are aimed at realizing the delay in receiving a response or the fact of the respondent's silence. The absence of any reacting post can cause destructive consequences for interpersonal relations
between interlocutors, since, according to psychologists, the absence of responses is interpreted by the senders as the purposeful discursive action (for more details, see (Shaklein, Kovtunenko, 2021: 170-171).
Obtaining reacting posts is also an immanent component of the constructive communication experience (exchange of opinions) in social networks, since Internet users are looking for increased attention and confirmation of the proposed semantic position in the form of respondents' positive comments and details, both quantitatively and qualitatively (Carr, Foreman, 2015: 340). Moreover, the total number of responses (comments and "likes") received for a post on social networks is associated with the implementation of "the pleasure principle" (Bueno-Alastuey, 2013: 553; Lew et al., 2018: 212; Lutzky, Kehoe, 2016: 29; Walther, 2018: 87).
Cognitive linguistic research in the field of social networks shows that the limited signals that come from respondents force message senders to create mental representations about their respondents (Akay et al, 2017: 10; Wiktorsson, 2018: 371; Yao, Ling, 2020: 5; Yindi, 2018: 4). These mental representations can range from a specific (limited) group of reacting subjects to an indefinite (unlimited) group. Individual users of the social network "VKontakte", who have public accounts, believe that their respondents are a wide audience, while other users think that the recipients of their messages are friends, relatives and interested persons. In the sociolinguistic study of users of the same social network, it has been found that approximately half of the posts are intended for an unspecified imaginary group of respondents, while the other half is assigned to a certain audience (establishing and maintaining personal, public and professional contacts).
Despite the increased attention to the problem of the imaginary audience in the social networks users' discursive activity, in fact, such concepts as "expected reaction" and "imaginary collective respondent" has not been integrated in the research yet. An important incentive for the senders' communicative behavior is primarily the imaginary responsive audience (mental representations of someone who intends to respond to the stimulus). Stimulating messages are initiated based not only on the imaginary multiple respondents, but also on the respondents' responsive nature. On the one hand, the needs of expecting reacting posts from the responsive multiple respondents may vary in the format of the same social platform. On the other hand, these needs reflect the sender's intentions to establish and maintain communicative contact with a specific audience within their social network.
If the sender is expecting reacting posts, but is not sure or indifferent to which of the potential respondents will respond, he participates in a more mass communication than an individual-personal dialogue, since this sender does not have any assumptions about the persons who will join the communication and comment on the stimulating message. The addressee factor, feedback from the addressee is the pragmatic basis of communicative relations, in the context of which the interpersonal interactive exchange of opinions is carried out on social media platforms.
4. Results
In the context of face-to-face dialogue, the dominant trend is realizing momentary reactions to incoming stimuli in the format of verbal and nonverbal signals, from which the interlocutors, alternately changing the roles of the speaking subject and the respondent, extract relevant explicit/ implicit information. Reactions to the stimulus, as a rule, include conventional means of expressing consent and support for the addressee's opinion, the degree of awareness of the received message by the respondent. Cf.:
(1) The first policeman: Now free. The man from Mytishchi (screams hysterically): I'm free!!! Like a bird in the sky!!! I'm free!!! I forgot what fear means!! Glad to try, Comrade Senior Ensign!!! I wish you good health, Madam Liquid mother!!! I wish you good health, Mr. Wet Pushkin!!!" (Danilov, 2021: 61).
The reaction may clarify the information conveyed by the stimulating remark, as well as contain the positive/negative evaluation component, indicating the respondent's pragmatic attitude to the reported fact. So, in example (1), the stimulus and the reaction correlate as a consequence and a cause: the reactive message reveals one of the hypothetical versions explaining the state of affairs under discussion. At the same time, the respondent expresses a positive assessment of this state of affairs, generating a comic effect in communication (cf. the use of simile and expressive speech acts that convey the intensity of the external manifestation of the respondent's internal emotional-volitional state).
Evaluative reactive messages play the constructive role in forming exhaustive interlocutors' representations about the facts, events, and situations that constitute the subject of current dialogical interaction, and, as a rule, mark the end of the discussion of this subject, outline the transition of communication to other topics and plots. In other words, value judgments, reactively expressed in an oral face-to-face dialogue, determine the nature of the interlocutors' perception of the current interaction structure project the coherent nature of the stimulus and reaction.
Blog communication is also carried out in the dialogical format. A coherent sequence of the blogger and respondents' stimulating and commenting messages, which is delayed in the written register, in structural and pragmatic terms, reveals similarities with oral face-to-face dialogue. Stimuli and responsive comments form stable dialogic interaction models based on the issues initially set by the blogger. Dialogical analysis of such interactions is implemented taking into account the factor of the reacting addressee (his reacting post), which is also relevant for oral face-to-face communication between two interlocutors.
The collected corpus of blog texts revealed dialogues between two interlocutors (blogger and respondent, respondent and respondent), which include from two to nine stimulating and reacting messages in their structure (a total of 1000 fixations of dialogic interactions forming autonomous semantic blocks of jointly generated text). It is found that in the context of a dialogue between two interlocutors, the reaction to the initial stimulus takes place in 41.3 % of the total number of interactions, while reactive responses to stimulating interrogative cues account for 21.8 % (cf. with the format of oral face-to-face interaction, in which the similar model is implemented in 48.4 % of cases of interaction between the speaker and the listener).
Despite the fact that the parameters of face-to-face oral dialogic interaction are imitated in the blogosphere, the respondent, in fact, is not given the right to respond with a message that would qualify regardless of the topic and issues set by the initiator of communication (in an face-to-face dialogue, the addressee has such a right). The reacting interlocutors' messages not only express agreement with the previously put forward point of view or gratitude for the information received, as is the case in the face-to-face dialogue, but also uncover new details of the situation under discussion, provides their reaction with value judgments. The informational saturation of reactions (the dictum part), their subjective component (the modus part), in turn, encourage both already known and potentially new addressees to participate in the subsequent joint deployment of the blog text. In other words, the response message pragmatic structure necessarily includes two components:
1. A means of establishing/maintaining actual contact with the blogger or other respondent who has previously put forward an opinion;
2. Clarifying this opinion through uncovering new information that expands the understanding of the situation under discussion, revealing another new aspect or perspective of the vision of subject-object relations that initially became the subject of discussion. Cf.:
(2) "— Trent Alexander-Arnold is back in top form: after not the most successful last season and missing the Euro, he started with two assists in the Premier League, organized the first goal for Milan in the Champions League and played in the national team in midfield. Perhaps a new non-standard approach to training helped him...
- Very interesting stuff! Thank you very much! But still, Trent would have been taught to make serves more accurately, and then in half of the cases he hits somewhere in the clouds, apparently on moving objects ...
- The most interesting material. Thank you. Some kind of exorbitant level of training. Handsome..." (Blog London Eye, 2022).
The blogger invites the interlocutors to discuss the situation related to improving the performance of a famous football player, reveals the reason for another effective takeoff in his sports career. Responding to this stimulus, two respondents:
1. Support the blogger's position, thus marking the establishment of actual contact with him (in the text fragment, these segments, which serve in the blog text as means of connecting previous and current messages, are highlighted in bold italics);
2. Supplement the initial information with a subjective negative/positive assessment, which is implemented by conversational lexemes and expands the understanding of the situation under discussion, determines the possibility of subsequent participation in the communication of other interlocutors.
During the implementation of these addressee's strategic guidelines, the actual signals, acting as a means of linking the blog text, stimulate the author of the original message to re-participate in
the holistic unfolding of a joint discursive work. In other words, these signals, in fact, mark the incompleteness of the text, the potential for its subsequent unfolding by commenting on reactions to the primary stimulus. As our research has shown, the blogger re-interacts with respondents in 25.9 % of sports discussion contexts, while in 19.1 % of cases the modus component of respondents' replicas acts as the basis of the response, and in 17 % of cases the blogger interacts with respondents with whom he has already had prior communication experience.
The constructive factors of the coherent unfolding of the blogosphere texts are the emotional-volitional components of the messages-reactions and the fact that the interlocutors had preliminary experience of communicating with each other. It seems that the commenting nature of the reacting messages indicates that respondents regard their discursive contribution not as a manifestation of attention to the blogger, but as an attempt to form a stable group of interlocutors interested in exchanging information and emotions about current events. The structural architectonics of the blogosphere provides the expression of reactions in the form of a positive/negative assessment of the dictum and modus component of previous messages. At the same time, some incentives offered by respondents do not always receive reactions due to the massive flow of responsive messages to the initial information offered by the blogger. It is the blogger who appears as a priority interlocutor for respondents.
The explicitly expressed reactions (of the blogger or respondent) to the initial stimulus (of the respondent or blogger), in fact, signal the generation of connectivity in the current text segment, since these reactive actions contribute to the resumption of dialogical interaction, which, as one of the interlocutors could assume, has come to an end. To a certain extent, this factor determines the possibility of a potentially endless unfolding of the blog text, to compensate for the mediated nature of communication (communication participants may react delayed in time, i.e. to be included in the discussion even after a long time after the initiation of the stimulus).
Blog communication is a group communication: the initial stimulus becomes the basis of response for an indefinite number of respondents interested in discussing the issues that are made public in the stimulating message. In this regard, it turns out to be impossible to predict which of the potential set of respondents and at what point in time will respond with a response message. Each of the interlocutors, in turn, a priori does not have knowledge about which of the specific or potential participants in the interaction will be the recipient of the message put forward by him, since the total number of communicants may vary in a certain time interval of the joint deployment of the blog text.
Respondents can also take a contemplative position in communication and not manifest themselves in any way in the space of the text. As a result, in the format of blog interaction, reactions to a stimulating message reveal a number of other functions than in spontaneous oral interaction between two interlocutors. It is obvious that when a blogger puts forward an initial message or one of the respondents offers his version of the response to this message, other interlocutors observe corporate ethics and reinforce the formed segment of the text with their evaluative reactions in order for group communication pursuing common interests to achieve its communicative goals.
Providing a stimulus with a reaction can also be regarded by the interlocutor as a manifestation of politeness and respect towards the author of the original message, putting forward his position as a priority for subsequent discussion. In the format of blog communication, there is always a conflict, on the one hand, between the needs of coordinated expression and receiving reactions and, on the other hand, an excessive flow of reactions that do not always correlate with the original stimulating message and lead communication to other topics and problems.
Implicit responses to initial stimuli play a constructive role both in face-to-face dialogue and in computer-mediated communication. In a face-to-face dialogue, responsive messages are not always accompanied by actual means signaling that the stimulus has been successfully received by the interlocutor. These means may be implicitly implied by the reacting interlocutor. Cf.:
(3) "MASHA: How's your Finban coming along? Has any clarity come? SERGEY: Finban... Well, I'm doing my part. There is no clarity yet. Ignat meets with investors all the time. We are waiting, hoping and believing. MASHA: The name is kind of stupid - Finban. Who invented this for you? SERGEY: Yes, who... Ignat, who else. I told him it was stupid. He believes that it is associated with finance and banks" (Danilov, 2021: 111).
The repetition of the nomination Finban in the reacting replica forming the first segment of the analyzed dialogical unity indicates that the reacting interlocutor activates explicit phatic means
aimed at maintaining communicative contact with the initiator of the interaction. In the second segment, this means is implicit (Fes...), however, the response of the initiator of communication is conceptually modeled taking into account this means. The basis for decoding its implicit content is the general context of dialogic interaction, which determines the relevance and validity of the reaction to the specified content. The second interlocutor, who avoids explicit expression of the phatic component when implementing his second replica, relies on the communicative rule according to which the context of interaction is a factor relevant for explication of the implicitly expressed content.
In pragmatic linguistics, which studies the contextual patterns of the unfolding of dialogical forms, the most diverse types of implications in stimulating and reacting replicas are distinguished. In particular, we can talk about the primary implication, the understanding of which by the respondent is possible due to the interlocutors' general conceptual knowledge about a certain reality segment. Thus, when activating a particular frame of knowledge, the reacting interlocutor restores the implicated content based on explicitly expressed elements that belong to the same frame (cf. example (3)). The secondary implication has a more complex structure: the implicit content of the dialogical message is extracted based on some extralinguistic information. In the format of lateral interaction, reacting messages usually contain explicit phatic means (cf. example (2)).
In the context of blog communication, the weakest form of implicit feedback is realized when the sender receives not a verbal reaction, but only technical confirmation that the interlocutor has read the stimulating statement. The data of our survey shows that 51.3 % of Internet users participating in blog communication, relying on technical extensions of sites, check whether their messages have been read by the interlocutors.
This feedback form is also systematically manifested in face-to-face communication, in which the recipient has the opportunity to confirm that the addressee's remark was perceived by him/her. Markers of confirmation are words such as yes, of course, and the like, which have a variety of illocutionary power of affirmation. At the same time, in our file there are contexts in which the moments of message acceptance are not marked by linguistic means, and the subject of the stimulating message concludes that his/her interlocutor has perceived the initiating statements in a relevant way based on the analysis of essential communication fragments.
When analyzing blog communication in the pragmatic aspect, it was revealed that Internet users, having recorded the fact of reading their stimulating judgments and not receiving an explicit response, recognize that the interlocutor agrees with the point of view that was presented in the stimulus. In other words, the sender, finding that his message has been read, but not explicitly commented on, concludes that the interlocutor has expressed agreement with the published opinion.
Obviously, in this context, such communicative factor as the experience of preliminary communication between the addressee and the reacting subject is triggered. The procedure of the so-called "implicit confirmation of the stimulating point of view" in this case turns out to be effective due to the fact that the phatic contact was previously established between the interlocutors and before that they had already entered into dialogic interaction. Such a form of reaction, which can be designated as "negative reacting post", creates ambiguous conditions for the subsequent interlocutors' interaction, i.e. to a certain extent, it is problematic.
The second possible form of receiving implicit feedback from the interlocutor is provided by labeling the original messages. From a technical point of view, tagging in this case means moving messages to the stack, which can be accessed at any time using a command such as "read the next tagged message". Such labeling is used for several reasons. Thus, by implementing the stimulus, the sender has the opportunity to highlight the most important segments of the informative content of the message.
In the context of blog communication, we consider this allocation of information as a means to provide implicit feedback, because when the sender looks at this message after a while, he can read the line "marked by xxx" and conclude that the addressee intends to perform some actions with the message. It seems that this feedback form is uninformative, however, in some communication contexts it turns out to be relevant and sufficient for the subsequent development of a dialogue between specific interlocutors.
Some bloggers resort to technical (usually color) labeling of certain segments of the initiated information in order to explicitly indicate to potential respondents what kind of responses are planned to be, which should become the semantic focus of the response commenting. It seems that
such blogger's "concern" about the informational content of subsequent communication works as a form of providing feedback with interlocutors.
The third form of implicit feedback in blog communication is related to the forwarding of stimulating messages by sending copies of them to a potentially unlimited circle of respondents. The pragmatic basis for such a message initiation may be the blogger's need to distribute relevant information to an additional number of recipients or to provide an implicit request for a comment on a stimulating message.
As a result, messages can be transmitted at different times and by different respondents discussing the same problem. The most relevant possibility in this case is that the respondent sends a stimulating message to other respondents immediately after receiving it, without providing a verbally expressed response. The blogger can see that the original message has been forwarded, and possibly determine the reasons for its forwarding to other recipients. We consider such respondent's response as another form of providing implicit feedback to the blogger.
In the format of implicit feedback, blog communication provides a variety of technically diverse means for forwarding original messages associated with adding new respondents to the message, each of which has unique pragmatic characteristics:
1. Adding a third respondent as the recipient of the message (this can only be done by a blogger, and therefore this tool is not related to providing implicit feedback);
2. Sending a message to a third party using the "To get information" command (this procedure can be performed by either a blogger or any respondent; new respondents receive all comments that are made to the stimulating message);
3. Using the "Additional Copy" command, through which the original message is sent to a third party, but not comments on this message.
The second and third methods available to the respondent for sending messages have different connotations for most participants of blog communication, and therefore they will be perceived as different types of providing implicit feedback.
In the format of blog communication, we can talk about a number of factors that determine the need for feedback from a participant. Technical and pragmatic capabilities that provide feedback are the most essential factor that determines the high degree of probability that blog communication is successful and effective. In the course of implementing their discursive intentions, blog communication participants obviously limit themselves to expressing implicit feedback. In certain cases, this type of communication is relevant for the subsequent unfolding of communication, in particular, if a group of like-minded people has previously agreed on this line of non-verbal behavior. However, many well-established formats of blogging communication impose higher requirements on the publication of reactions; reveal the dependence of the intensity of communication on the explicit expression of feedback.
A survey conducted by us among adherents of virtual communication on the Internet showed that explicit verbal reactions of a commenting nature are natural when discussing current topical issues, as well as detailing the situation that has become the subject of discussion. The lack of feedback in this case can become the basis for misunderstanding or lead to a communicative failure in communication. In this format of blog communication, the potential for success shows dependence on the communicative strategies used by interlocutors to achieve discursive goals.
The sender of the original stimulating message determines the communicative needs of other participants in the feedback. There are also communicative strategies that are aimed at avoiding feedback, not creating conditions for the formation of dependence of the discursive activity of interlocutors on the expression of feedback. For example, in a situation of solving an urgent problem that takes place in spontaneous dialogical interaction, a typical step for a reacting interlocutor is to offer an effective alternative to the proposed judgment, waiting for feedback, and then, if necessary, putting forward another, more effective alternative.
In blog communication, as a rule, a more effective communication strategy is used: the user incorporates both alternatives into one responsive message, enabling the interlocutor to make an individual choice between the proposed solutions, taking into account subjective priorities. This strategy is aimed at reducing the costs of messaging associated with a possible delay in communication by reducing the waiting time for feedback. Proactive communication strategies are more successful in computer-mediated communication in the sense that various alternative solutions to a problem situation are clearly defined at an early stage of interaction, and relevant information and emerging issues are concentrated in larger dialogical blocks.
In the context of blog communication, there are situations in which explicit feedback on a stimulus, a response to a message turns out to be an important constructive element of a jointly generated text. First of all, the situation in which a communicative event is realized may be such that it carries inherent uncertainty about the expected response. For example, it may be that the interlocutors have previously discussed the risk of some problematic event and possible counteractions that, in their opinion, should be taken if this event takes place. If, in such a context of communication, one of the interlocutors informs the other interlocutor that this event really happened, it will be considered natural if the addressee publishes his negative reaction and pragmatic attitude to what happened. In other words, the need for feedback to a certain extent depends on the degree of expectation of the responding message.
In addition, many communicative situations are such that the result of one exchange of messages becomes crucial for how the interlocutors will realize their intentions in further interaction. In such cases, feedback with a stimulating message also plays an important role. For example, if a group of like-minded people solves a problem, and one of the participants suggests a certain initial strategy for resolving the problem situation, it is extremely important that the other interlocutors make public their pragmatic attitude (especially if it is negative) so that further interaction can continue. Finally, if the participants of blog communication also use other communication channels, then the probability of implementing implicit feedback increases. If, for example, they regularly meet in reality, then, in the format of computer-mediated communication, it is considered less important to provide feedback and behave in accordance with the social conventions of virtual communication. In the absence of other communication channels, the participant of blog communication has a need to make a positive impression on the interlocutor, which, in turn, determines their active commentating activity and the frequency expression of explicit feedback.
An important factor determining the possibilities of feedback for interlocutors is the design of a system of jointly generated blog text. We have already mentioned the basic interface property of this text associated with the ability to confirm the receipt of a message. It is also possible to choose the automatic display of such information, which eliminates the need for interlocutors to view "old" messages when perceiving information that is relevant at the moment. This possibility of receiving up-to-date information does not necessarily have a textual character. Modern blog communication interfaces are developed using graphic means, color graphic means are widely used to indicate the reception of a stimulating message. Tools are being developed to provide basic explicit feedback without sending a responsive verbal message.
Interfaces involve the use of special links for comments, depending on the type of feedback that the respondent intends to provide. The title of the stimulating message is accompanied by such functions as "reject the message", "disapprove the message". Such functions are thoroughly tested in real situations of interaction between specific interlocutors. It is planned to introduce more multifunctional similar extensions in the blog communication interfaces currently being developed.
5. Conclusion
The article provides a linguistic analysis of feedback in accordance with their pragmatic role and functional load in the format of blog interaction. In the context of blog communication, dialogical relationships between senders and recipients of stimulating messages, which are a precondition for the exchange of opinions, are based on the planned feedback of the respondent. The differences between explicit and implicit feedback with stimulating messages are revealed.
In blog interaction, in comparison with face-to-face communication, implicit feedback plays a more constructive role and has a specific functional load due to the delayed (asynchronous) response of the respondent to the stimulus, the reactive activation of the means of establishing and maintaining phatic contact with the interlocutor and the subjective detailing of the dictum and/or modus content of the stimulating message.
Due to the time and/or spatial distance between the interlocutors, as well as the presence of multiple respondents, feedback is predetermined by the expectations of the addressee regarding the planned interaction, and not by the fact of mutual recognition of individual intentions that characterize oral spontaneous communication. The projected response and mental representations of the imaginary responsive respondent shed light on the pragmatic differences between stimulating and responsive messages, through which the participants of the communication plan to continue the exchange of information and emotions. It is established that in blog interaction, when
initiating a stimulating judgment, the lack of feedback can be a natural phenomenon that does not affect the effectiveness of communication.
In the format of blog communication, feedback is an important factor in the unfolding of the jointly generated text, as in various computer systems in general. Innovations that could be introduced to provide feedback in blog communication do not necessarily have to be technically complex, but based on a comprehensive knowledge of the illocutionary needs of interlocutors in establishing and maintaining phatic contact with each other. We hope that future blog communication interfaces will be designed in such a way as to provide a wide variety of forms of communication for interlocutors, taking into account the understanding of the role of feedback in human interaction and dialogic communication.
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