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филологические науки -языкознание
Ленец Анна Викторовна, Шипилова Диана Сергеевна ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ЭКСПЛИКАЦИЯ ...
УДК 81'42
ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ЭКСПЛИКАЦИЯ ВИРТУАЛЬНОГО ИМИДЖА АМЕРИКАНСКОГО ПОЛИТИКА (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ТВИТОВ АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ПОЛИТИКОВ)
© 2018
Ленец Анна Викторовна, доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры немецкой филологии Института филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации Шипилова Диана Сергеевна, преподаватель кафедры теории и практики межкультурной коммуникации Института филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации
Южный федеральный университет (344082, Россия, Ростов-на-Дону, ул. Большая Садовая, 33, e-mail: [email protected])
Аннотация. В настоящей статье анализируются лингвистические средства, которые используются американскими политиками в процессе их коммуникативного взаимодействия в современном виртуальном пространстве Интернета. Твиттер трактуется нами не только как одна из актуальных форм речевого взаимодействия политического актора с потенциальными избирателями, но и как эффективный способ конструирования имиджа политика в виртуальном пространстве. Детальному исследованию подвергаются лингвистические средства, которые позволяют политику сформировать собственный имидж, необходимый для достижения определённых политических целей. Многие из лингвистических средств обусловлены условиями коммуникации в социальной сети Твиттер. Специфика данной социальной сети детерминируется ограниченным объёмом информации, её оперативным распространением, высокой интерактивностью и др. Каждый из перечисленных признаков в той или иной мере влияет на построение высказываний в твитах на лексическом, синтаксическом и графическом уровнях, а также на формирование имиджа американского политика. Общей чертой, несомненно, на всех уровнях является лаконичность и сжатие текста, использование которых, в свою очередь, отличается у разных пользователей в силу использования различных лингвистических средств для достижения целей и создания желаемого виртуального имиджа.
Ключевые слова: лингвистические средства, виртуальная коммуникация, коммуникативное взаимодействие, манипуляция, виртуальный имидж, политический дискурс, твит, лексический уровень, синтаксический уровень, графический уровень.
THE LINGUISTIC EXPLICATION OF THE AMERICAN POLITICIAN VIRTUAL IMAGE (AS EXEMPLIFIED IN TWEETS OF THE AMERICAN POLITICIANS)
© 2018
Lenets Anna Viktorovna, doctor of philology, professor, the Head of the German philology department of the Institute of Philology, Journalism, and Intercultural Communication Shipilova Diana Sergeevna, Lecturer of the Theory and practice of intercultural communication department of the Institute of Philology, Journalism, and Intercultural Communication Southern Federal University (344082, Russia, Rostov-on-Don, Bolshaja Sadovaja avenue, 33, e-mail: [email protected])
Abstract. The article analyzes the linguistic means used by the American politicians in the process of their communicative interaction in the modern virtual space. Twitter is interpreted not only as one of the most actual form of speech interaction between politics and voters, but also as a way of constructing a political image in a virtual space. Linguistic means aimed at image formation are exposed to detailed research. Many of the linguistic tools are due to the communication condition in Twitter. The specificity of this social network is determined by the limited amount of information, its rapid spread, high interactivity, etc. Each of the listed characteristics to some extent affects the construction of utterances in tweets on the lexical, syntactic and graphic levels, as well as the image formation of the American politician. A common feature, of course, at all levels is the brevity and text compression, the use of which differs among different users due to the various linguistic tools to achieve the goals and create the desired virtual image.
Keywords: linguistic means, virtual communication, communicative interaction, manipulation, virtual image, political discourse, political image, tweet, lexical level, syntactic level, graphic level.
Satellite TV, phone communication and, finally, the Internet unite communicants into a single global intellectual, information, cultural and political space. Such intensification of communicative interaction in the modern media space and an increase in the speed of information exchange between communicants was greatly facilitated by the technological advances in the field of information processing and transmission on the Internet. The rapid development of the Internet as a global information and communication space has become a challenge for modern linguistics, exploring various aspects of political communication [1; 2]. It should be noted that the research of modern scientists is mainly devoted to such topics as the culture of political discourse in the virtual space, communicative interaction, the construction of the necessary political image.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the linguistic means by which the image of a politician is constructed in the modern virtual space. At the same time, communicative interaction is defined as the interaction of two or more subjects whose purpose and main content is to create their own image and form an opinion about the interlocutor. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) to establish the status of the image in modern political virtual interaction; 2) to describe the linguistic means used by American politicians on Twitter; 3) to analyze the explication of the image of the American politician by linguistic Балтийский гуманитарный журнал. 2018. Т. 7. № 3(24)
means in virtual space.
Communicative interaction is actively explored currently in linguistics, where there is an increased interest in the study of linguistic phenomena, which contribute not only to create a successful image of a communicant, but also to an effective influence on the interlocutor [3; 4]. Speech communication is considered as one of the ways of cooperation. The communicant as a linguistic personality, who, thanks to the created image, largely determines the success of communicative interaction of partners in speech communication.
The characteristic features of virtual communication are a dynamic and reduced standards of oral and written language communicators, unprepared statements (social networks), active use of contractions in personal correspondence, free syntactic construction of the utterance. Complex linguo-pragmatic study of virtual space and the revealing the system of linguistic units, that have linguo-pragmatic potential, allow to define the basic mechanisms of speech interaction in public communication: registers (synchronous / asynchronous) and forms (active / passive)of communicative interaction, communicants' status, their level of proficiency [5]. Analysis of the specificity of the different types of virtual discourse (political Internet discourse, chat and texting, email messages, accounts on social networks) helps to identify the specificity of modern communicative
Lenets Anna Viktorovna, Shipilova Diana Sergeevna philological sciences -
THE LINGUISTIC EXPLICATION ... linguistics
virtual space and ways of political image formation [6; 7].
The image and the process of its creation / construction became the object of interdisciplinary research in the late 20th and early 21st centuries [8]. Such an interest in the problem of image is due to the fact that it promotes successful exposure and manipulation in communication. Image is an ideal object that arises in the minds of people; it is not subjected to the direct measurement, it can be evaluated only on relation, manifesting in communication, activity and choice [9]. From the position of the communicative-and-activity approach, the image can be viewed as a model of human behavior created for each individual communicative situation and working towards the achievement of a communicative goal. As a model, the image has an unlimited number of behaviors and can be considered effective if it contributes to the goal of communication (psychological or pragmatic). The choice of image modeling strategy is due to the fact that in the society there are a set of ready-made action templates, behaviors, similar models that communicants reproduce in similar communicative situations.
The creation of a positive (or negative) image in the modern virtual space occurs through the correlation of the ideal image with the current knowledge about the object [10]. At the same time, a key role in the formation of socially significant images, behavioral stereotypes and world perception belongs in many ways to virtual communication. Such patterns and behavioral stereotypes are introduced into the mass consciousness through modern virtual means, reproduced later in the image of the individual, group, or organization. The virtual space by means of symbols reproduces stereotypical collective representations and provides, thus, human participation in communicative interaction.
The general concept of image is defined as the reflection of a person, group, organization, consciously created for the purpose of successful impact and manipulation. Manipulation has a number of common features with lie and the formation of false image. Thus, by means of lie and manipulation, a latent influence on the recipient is effected; lie and manipulation are deliberate conscious actions; the aim of lie and manipulation is to ensure the beneficial behavior of the interlocutors [11], i. e. to create a positive, but in fact not real image in the public eye.
At the same time, an urgent need for an information society is a positive image created by the interlocutor. Such need for communicative appeal (socio-political, cultural, historical, personal) is a consequence of a successfully updated message in the process of verbal communication. In particular thoughtful designed linguistic explication of the image allows communicants to manipulate the interlocutor in the virtual space successfully. The analysis of linguistic means allows to draw a conclusion about the linguistic explication of one's own image by politicians.
Using relevant strategies and tactics allows to create a personal, commercial, socio-political, cultural and historical image. In the framework of this article, we will focus only on the personal image on the Internet, which is explicated by American politicians on personal pages in the social network Twitter.
Formation of the image contributes to the formation of reputation as an additional advantage over other competitors, as well as conscience and behavior manipulation of the interlocutor. The use of linguistic tools, focused on the image construction, allows its definition as a polymetric phenomenon, the functions of which are quite diverse. The main functions of the image in the virtual space - the achievement of the effect of attractiveness, the possibility of hidden manipulation of the recipient of information.
Tweets of American politicians published in the social network Twitter are the data for the present study. The choice of this particular social network is due to its popularity and prevalence all over the world (313 million active users around the world). So, there are 25.6 million Twitter followers in D. Trump account. Virtual communication in real time 78
allows the politician not only to discuss the ongoing events, but also to manage latently a situation.
To maintain the experimental integrity we chose «clean» tweets - messages written personally by an American politician. At the same time, the possibility of retweet was excluded. During the pilot study by means of continuous sampling method we selected and analyzed about 1000 tweets from personal pages of D. Trump, H. Clinton, B. Sanders and J. Kasich.
Methods of contextual analysis and semantic-stylistic analysis were used in the present study. The combination of these methods made it possible to reveal the actual meaning of tweets and to establish the linguistic originality of the explicable image. Contextual analysis was used to study the language unit in the expanded context. The study of the semantic nuances of the lexeme in various contexts was carried out with the help of the semantic-stylistic method. The use of the quantitative estimation method ensures the reliability of the obtained results.
The communicative behavior of politicians is determined by the effect they seek to have on the addressees. We are going to focus on the linguistic tools used by American politicians in the social network Twitter. Filled with a certain content, the tweet gets the linguistic characteristics, which together determine the personality of the politician, and influence the creation of his image.
The determining factor of all tweets is the signs saving, i.e. the politician seeks to write less, but at the same time to be understood. Therefore, a characteristic feature of tweets in political communication is the absence of verbal forms of greetings, farewells. It can be explained not only by the limited length of tweets, but also by the general focus of the account. In this case, politicians often resort to the use of non-verbal communication. Thus, politicians in the tweet structure increasingly use links to full text, video review, audio recording, etc.: Departing Golden, CO. for Arizona now - after an unbelievable rally. Watch here: [12].
The style of tweeting facilitates the disclosure of the speaker personality and identifies common stylistic features, traditions, culture, etc. So, for example, the use and repetition of graphic elements (smiles) as elements of style inform about the high degree of individual excitement. At the same time in political accounts such manifestation of the individuality is not encouraged, because it can mislead individuals with different attitudes and principles.
Twitter sets certain language criteria for tweets, that determine the choice of certain lexical, graphic, grammatical, syntactic, and other means, deserving further consideration.
The lexical level of tweeting involves a set of specific lexical units that are specific to a given social network. In 2009 western twitter-expert Dan Zarella conducted a study based on an analysis of millions of tweets. In his opinion, the most frequency words and phrases in Twitter were: you, Twitter, please, retweet, post, blog, social, free, media, help, please retweet, great, Social Media, 10, follow, how to, top, etc. [13]. It should be noted that the traditional methods of communication are not suitable for such a capacious way of communication that occurs on Twitter. T. Hockenson believes that communicants have to resort to «trim the fat» [14]. At the moment, Twitter slang has already been developed (b/w=between, b4=before, beetweet=hot tweet, bgd=back-ground, BR=best regards, cre8=create, cuttweet=a retweet that is a shortened version of the original h gp. [15]). Of particular interest are the lexical abbreviations in the form of the following symbols:
- alphabetic spelling of a word (shortening of a word to one letter): The phony lawsuit against Trump U (= University) could have been easily settled by me but I want to go to court. 98 % approval rating by students. Easy win [16];
- use of abbreviations: These crimes won't be happening if I'm elected POTUS (= President of the Unated States). Killer should have never been here. #AmericaFirst [17];
- stem clipping: Thank you Greeley, CO! REAL change means restoring honesty to the govt. Our plan will END
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филологические науки -языкознание
Ленец Анна Викторовна, Шипилова Диана Сергеевна ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ЭКСПЛИКАЦИЯ ...
govt. (=governmental) corruption! [18].
American politicians, by means of tweets, tend to the expression, which leads to the use of abbreviated words, phrases, utterances, as well as abbreviations and acronyms. Abbreviations represent a special type of language means economy on Twitter, because in the pre-election discourse long notation makes it difficult to perceive information and cannot be placed in a tweet with the limited amount of symbols. Expression in tweeting is achieved by an unusual decoding: the abbreviation is transformed into a judgment. For example, ICYMI is an acronym meaning «if you missed it» (In Case You Missed It).
Political tweets tend to the standard of using abbreviated versions of words and phrases. Here are the examples of common abbreviations that we discovered during the analysis of accounts of American politicians: CEO - Chief Executive Officer; FLOTUS - First Lady of the United States; V.P. - Vice-President; HBCU - historically black colleges and universities; Plz - please; TU - thank you; FYI - for your information; RE - reply;
At the syntactic level, we found linguistic features, where tweets are subject to the tendency of convergence of oral and written speech. Sentences become fragmented, while losing their length; syntactic links - free, which increases the role of the context. Syntactic features are manifested in the use of:
- break in the narrative: Departing NHnow-great morning with record crowd in Portsmouth- in a snow storm! Thank you! [19]
- attachment: Ready to lead. Ready to Make America Great Again. #Debate #MAGA [20];
- parceling: Hillary is too weak to lead on border security - no solutions, no ideas, no credibility. She supported NAFTA, worst deal in US history. #Debate [21];
- grammatical incompleteness: Leaving for Liberty University. I'll be speaking today in front of a record crowd. #Trump2016 [22];
- detachment: Ted Cruz should be disqualified from his fraudulent win in Iowa. Weak RNC and Republican leadership probably won't let this happen! Sad [23].
- anadiplosis: In addition to those without health coverage - those that have disastrous #Obamacare are seeing MASSIVE PREMIUM INCREASES. Repeal & replace! [24].
It is relevant to consider tweets on the graphic level, which involves graphically fixing the features of pronunciation and intonation, as well as the use of emoji. Tweets as a result of the written speech of an individual, transmit information from the position of visually perceived symbols. A set of symbols and a system of relations between graphemes (signs) and phonemes (sounds) constitute the area of graphics. With the help of the @ a message is drawn to a certain user on Twitter (e. g. @username). So, when mentioning / accessing a Twitter account, it's enough to put the @ symbol before the name. In Twitter, constructions like @ username automatically become links to the user's account, which makes it easier to find and identify the account: @ JebBush is a low energy «stiff» who should focus his special interest money on the many people ahead of him in the polls. Has no chance! [25].
A hashtag is a sign used to indicate a topic or mark a keyword to relate, is used as a kind of tool for classifying tweets. # - hashtag. This sign allows to find the topic of interest among a huge number of tweets: Make a plan to vote! #IMWITHHER [26].
Due to the punctuation character limit, punctuation on Twitter takes on a special attention. To attract it of the recipient and to express the communicant's emotions the intensive punctuation is used, for example, the multiple question marks «????» in the meaning of «unclear»; multiple
points «........» to indicate a pause, omission of part of the
text in the meaning of «no words»; multiple exclamation marks «!!!!!!» to transfer delight, joy/ anger, irritation, as well as a combination of «..!!!!» signs, etc.: REPEAL AND REPLACE!!! #ObamaCareInThreeWords [27].
Tweets with the enhanced punctuation in most cases do
not represent a reflection. The communicant himself makes a decision, chooses an emotion and puts emphasis. It is noteworthy that the same set of sign can have different meanings.
As a means of conveying intonation, as well as emphatic stress, the use of capital or repeated letters by D. Trump should be noted. In conditions of conciseness of the text, this technique accentuates the emotional state of the writer, which is expressed:
- in one word: Ted Cruz is totally unelectable, if he even gets to run (born in Canada). Will loose big to Hillary. Polls show I beat Hillary easily! WIN! [28];
- in the whole sentence: YOU NEED BOTH A PUBLIC AND A PRIVATE POSITION [26].
Completely capital tweet means a caps lock voice or an angry state.
In Twitter, graphic signs convey the characteristics of spontaneous oral speech, because the user feels that he is in the flow of oral speech. Graphic tools create a field of nonverbal means of communication, making tweets brighter and more relevant.
Thus, we have revealed the main linguistic explication of the American political image. Many of the linguistic tools are due to the technical capabilities of the social network Twitter and its specificity - the limitation of the amount of transmitted information, its rapid distribution, high interactivity, the possibility of marking with a hashtag. Each of the listed characteristics in one way or another affects the construction of utterances in tweets on the lexical (the use of abbreviations, letter abbreviations, the stem clipping), syntactic (asyndeton, detachment, parceling, etc.) and graphic levels.
A common feature, of course, at all levels is the brevity and text compression, the use of which differs among different users due to the various linguistic tools to achieve the goals and create the desired virtual image.
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This article is published under the auspices of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation 16-34-00014a1.
Статья поступила в редакцию 07.07.2018
Статья принята к публикации 27.08.2018
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