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13A.S. Titlova
MICROBLOG AS AN EXAMPLE OF A CREOLIZED TEXT
Keywords: electronic communication, microblog, medialinguistics, mediatext, verbal, nonverbal, creolized text, polycoded text, iconicity, visual content, paralinguistic codes, types of correlation, degrees of creolization, connotation, associative bonds.
Abstract: The research reveals different approaches to the problem of creolized texts and the place and the role of an image or any other code in them. It describes the types of relations between verbal and nonverbal parts of the texts that contain paralinguistic signs. A microblog text is considered as an example of a polycoded text and a numerical analysis shows the type and percentage ratio of the microblog text content.
Ключевые слова: электронная коммуникация, микроблог, медиалингвистика, медиатекст, вербальный, невербальный, креолизованный текст, поликодовый текст, иконичность, визуальное содержимое, паралингвистические коды, типы корреляции, степень креолизации, коннотация, ассоциативные связи.
Аннотация: В исследовании изучены различные подходы к проблеме креолизованных текстов и месту и роли в них изображения или любого другого кода. В статье описаны типы отношений между вербальной и невербальной частями текста, содержащего паралингвистические знаки. Текст микроблога рассматривается как пример поликодового текста. Числовой анализ демонстрирует тип и процентное соотношение контента текста микроблога.
The object of research in internet linguistics is electronic communication, which is considered a communicative manipulation in the World Wide Web, or medialinguistics. This concept is relatively new but is well known to the linguists who deal with the study of mass media. In some of works it is denoted as Speech Studies where the key points for speech understanding are the following concepts: participants of communication, or speech figures and their speech behavior; the sphere of speech; the genre of speech; texture of speech.
The linguistically relevant features of electronic communication on different language levels (morphological, lexical, syntactical, textual) will make up the subject of research.
The unit by means of which communication is performed in the sphere of mass communication is called a mediatext.
A modern linguistic identity lives in the world of mediatexts that form the discourse of mass information. Reflecting real life events, mediatexts also contain additional informative-cultural implications. Recipients should be able to interpret thematic and semantic codes in the mediainformation they get. Very often such information is not plain facts but more of a combination of different text structures within a mediatext. A mediatext is created in the basis of signs and contains different codes of perception: verbal, visual. Thus, the consumer of information has to decode the means used, the degree of their emotionality, their meaning complicity, and the functions they fulfil. L.G. Antonova notices that "very often mediautterance reflect current in mass communication relationships and traditions in performing products of mass information: collective authorship and technological effectiveness; a whole system of ideological influence; the massive involvement and the individual access to the information; inability of the receipient to critically evaluate the information; the constrain of the contents, the suppression of the audience, paracultural nature".
Leontyev A.A. notes that "a text in the Internet medium is a definite semiotic-linguistic variation of a mass media text which is actualized in the form of a hypertext; a hypertext remains a text of a traditional rendering from the linguistic and philological points of view, thus hypertext resources are a semiotic-linguistic variation of mass media texts" [5:26]. But should we consider all the Internet texts mediatexts? Apparently not, since not all the Internet resources fulfil media functions to the full extent, neither do they measure up to the characteristics of a mediatext. Here the reader should speak of the mediapotential of a text, pointing out a category of media implement.
The essential characteristic of a mediatext is a strict determination according to the communication channels. Hence, a more exact concept to define a mediatext would be the concept of a web-mediatext, as the World Wide Web is the most popular Internet service and this very communicative medium contains the texts under consideration. Meanwhile, the language of Hy-
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perText Transfer Protocol - a special means of images and information management on a web site - allows the writer to compose text and graphic information.
The characteristic features of web technology is in the ability to combine in one structural document (web page) information elements of different origin (texts, pictures, sound), and to insert links to other sites located in different places on the Internet. The variety of Internet services and their functions shows that it is wrongful to classify the Internet in general as a means of mass media. The Internet is larger than mass media and the Internet mass media is just a kind of Internet resources.
The Internet is a peculiar communicative medium in whose resources some specific mass media appeared. The Internet mass media is an independent component of the mass media system alongside with the press, radio, and television.
Among the characteristic features of the net mass media, the texts under observation are there are hypertextual, interactive, and multimedia.
Hypertextuality - the system of connection between separate documents through hyperlinks - is a unique feature of net editions. Hyperlinks to various sources of information allow the writer to improve the quality, completeness, and truthfulness of information requested, which in its turn makes a mediatext interactive, allowing it to include audio and video information, as well as offering option to search for information.
Interactivity is a direct interaction of a recipient and an author. In comparison to the specific nature of the communicative process in traditional mass media, a communicant in the World Wide Web has the opportunity to react directly in the same medium. The communication in this case can have the delayed or simultaneous character.
Poymanova O.V. notes that "the Internet is not the first and the only multimedia sphere. Printed media, actively using, apart from a text, graphics and photo content, can hardly be called monomedia. Television is a rather multimedia channel. But due to its technical capacity the Internet can use multimedia to the full extent" [6:44].
Nowadays there can be observed a significant growth of interest to the nonverbal means of communication. Visual information is studied in scientific works devoted to the linguistics of a text, but not the text in its traditional reading but a semiotically complicated, compound, polycoded, creolized text. V.N. Berezin believes that "illustrating now is becoming an element of the text formation. The level of integration of all artistic tools as well as any other sign formations into an integrated textual space of printed and electronic editions is rather high" [3:162].
In the contemporary world, the language of visualization can become the new international language. A very close attention of researches is attracted by the ratio of word (verbal) and visual (nonverbal) components, especially in the texts of electronic mass media. According to V.N. Berezin, "linguists are paying more and more attention to the organization of the so called creolized texts in the frames of mass media linguistic studies" [3:199].
Seeing an image as a specific sign system, linguists laid the foundation to a scientific understanding of creolized, polycoded texts in the works on semiotics. Y.Y. Gerchuk thinks that "every message doesn't exist isolated, they all form an integrated complex sign medium -semiosphere" [4:38].
There are several terminological definitions for the texts that combine the natural language and some elements of other sign systems. Y.A. Sorokin and E.F. Tarasov were the first to introduce the concept of "creolized texts" that is widely used in a modern day linguistics. They consider creolized texts as the "texts whose texture is made up of two non-homogenous parts: verbal linguistic (speech), and nonverbal (belonging to sign systems other than a natural language))" [7:180-181]. Therefore, a creolized text is a compound textual formation where both verbal and nonverbal elements have a complex impact on the receiver, in which case the mentioned elements form an integral visual, structural, conceptual, and functional unity.
There is another definition introduced by G.V. Yeyger and V.L. Yuht in 1974. In their typology of texts they separate an opposition of mono- and polycoded texts. In their opinion, "cases of combination of a natural linguistic code with a code of any other semiotic system (a picture, music, etc.) belong to polycoded texts in a general semiotic sense" [8:107]. Alongside with the aforementioned, there are such concepts as "a linguovisual complex" (Bolshiyanova 1987), "a graphic-verbal complex" (Bernadskaya 1987), "graphoverb" (Mikheev 1987), semiotically complicated texts (Protchenko 2006), and videoverbal texts (Poymanova 1997). When considering such a complex concept as a creolized text, it is necessary to distinguish verbal and nonverbal components in these type of texts. As in a written form of a message of any kind, a word row is just as visual as any other because there a font, color and style have their special meanings.
United into a definite structure, verbal and nonverbal components are interdependent in both substantive and formal aspects.
Polycoded texts can contain pictures, photographs, and diagrams as nonverbal signs. The components of an oral polycoded text can be represented by real objects of the world around, mimics, gestures. But it should be considered that such paralinguistic signs do not mean the text is a polycoded one. A text is polycoded if it is active, that is, the paralinguistic means in it contain a definite information. To make the codes in the text function, it is necessary to take into consideration the communicative idea, the situation of communication, and the subjects and goals of communication.
A verbal-photographic unity, where the verbal and graphic components form an integral visual, conceptual, and functional unity that provides its complex pragmatic impact on the recipient, can be one of the examples of a polycoded text.
The main components of a "classical" (limited) creolized text are: the verbal part (a caption, a verbal text), and the iconic, visual part which can be represented by illustrations (a picture, a photograph, a caricature, a diagram, a table, symbolic pictures, formulas, etc.).
It is necessary to note that it is not indisputable terminologically when analyzing creolized texts to use the concept "iconic component" as an equivalent, synonymous substitute to denote the graphic component. Linguists should agree with the widely accepted opinion of V.A. Vinogradov that "the language system (code) is oriented to symbolism, while a text is oriented to iconicity". The practice of replacement the definition "the graphic component" to the definition "visual" is also disputable as a message of any text in the written form, the word row is just as visual as any other. Everything has its meaning; the font, the color, and the style of the text typed or written. Thus, it is believed it is desirable to distinguish the verbal and nonverbal components in the frames of any creolized text. From the point of view of semiotics, a nonverbal sign differs fundamentally from a verbal one as the semantics of graphic signs are characterized by some uncertainty, vagueness, or blur in comparison to a word.
In the semantics of a graphic sign, in analogy with a word, there are distinguished both denotative and connotative meanings. A nonverbal sign contains two types of denotatives or sign i-fiers: 1) signifiers whose signified is any object, and 2) signifiers whose signified is an idea, an image, etc. A picture of a white dove is a good example here. On one hand, the picture of it simply denotes a bird. On the other hand, it is a traditional symbol of peace. Thus, the information of the first type (just as in the structure of the word semantics) is denotative, textual to some extent, its understanding is not difficult for the recipient and is based on some common knowledge. The information of the second type is connotative, it is based on associative bonds, which means that its understanding requires the knowledge of a definite code, social connections, or national specific character. The information of such type is polyvariative in its meanings.
One of the most important notes in the frames of the given approach which defines most of the contemporary research techniques: the graphic sign and the word, verbal and nonverbal components of a creolized texts never represent some "total of semiotic signs", their meaning is integrated and "forms a complex meaning" [1:14]. So, there are different types of correlation b e-
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tween the verbal and nonverbal parts, and different approaches to their description and classification in contemporary linguistics. Anisimova describes the correlations between the aforementioned components depending on the character of the information they convey - denotative or connota-tive. The researcher distinguishes 4 types of information:
1) Image D + word D: both components express denotative information but the image, as a rule, dominates over the word. This type of correlation is characteristic of informative statements.
2) Image D + word C: the image expresses denotative information, the verbal component expresses connotative information, the image dominates over the word. This type of correlation is characteristic of illustrative statements.
3) Image C + word D: the image expresses connotative information, the word expresses denotative information, the leading role belongs to the word. The type of correlation is characteristic of commenting statements.
4) Image C + word C: both components express connotative information and, as a rule, are equal to each other. This type of correlation is typical of symbolic statements.
E.E. Anisimova studied the correlation of complementarity and interdependence between the verbal and nonverbal parts of a creolized text. In the text with complementarity correlation, an image can be understood without words and it can exist independently. The verbal commentary fulfils a secondary function as it only describes the image, dubbing the information it conveys.
In the text with interdependence correlation, the image depends on the verbal commentary which defines its interpretation. Without the commentary, the meaning of the image is not clear or can be interpreted incorrectly. The verbal commentary in this case has the primary leading role [1:12].
Anisimova describes the relations between images and verbal parts according to their referential characteristic features:
1) Parallel correlation, when the content of the image and the verbal part fully coincide;
2) Complementary correlation, when the content of the image and the verbal part partially
overlap;
3) Substitutive correlation, when the nonverbal information substitutes the verbal one;
4) Interpretative correlation, when there are no points of direct contact between the content of the verbal and nonverbal parts, and the bond between them is performed on the basis of associations.
O.V. Poymanova suggests to distinguish creolized texts (videoverbal texts in the author's interpretation) according to the ratio of the volume of information conveyed by various signs and to the part the images in them play:
1) Repetitive texts - the image in general repeats the verbal text;
2) Additive texts - the image adds some additional information;
3) Intensifying texts - the image intensifies, underlines some aspect of the verbal information; the verbal information in its volume is considerably larger than the nonverbal one;
4) Oppositional texts - the content conveyed by the image comes into contradiction with the verbal information thus often creating a comical effect;
5) Integrative texts - the image is built into the verbal text or the verbal text completes the image to simultaneously convey the information;
6) Image-centric texts - with the leading role of the image; the verbal part just adds some information and details [6:87].
Besides describing the types of bonds between verbal and nonverbal components of a creaolized text, linguists find it important to also point out the different degrees of their participation in text organization: E.E. Anisimova distinguishes three main groups of creolized texts according to the nature of an image and its relations with the verbal part:
1) Texts with zero creolization (image is not represented),
2) Texts with partial creolization,
3) Texts with full creolization.
In the texts with partial creolization, there exist autosemantic relations between the verbal and nonverbal components which means that the verbal part is relatively independent from the image and the graphic elements of the text are optional. Such combination can often be found in newspapers, popular scientific and fictional texts.
In the texts with full creolization, the verbal part cannot exist separately nor independently from the graphic part - semantic relations are set between the two. In such a case, the verbal part is focused on the image or refers to it; the image plays the part of an obligatory element of the text. Such dependence can usually be observed in advertising (banners, caricatures, announcements, etc.), as well as in scientific and especially scientific-technical texts [1:15].
A similar classification also distinguishes three degrees of creolization: a strong creolization - with mutual synsemantics of the systems; a moderate creolization - with the apparent dominance of one system and an assisting role of the other; a weak creolization - when we can speak of traditional paralinguistic means of communication (phonatory, kinetic, graphic). An undeniable advantage of the latter classification is the concept of the weak creolization which we consider to be more appropriate and reasonable than the concept of a zero creolization as it is hardly feasible to speak of "pure texts" in the contemporary world.
Some of the most important characteristics of any written text (and a creolized text is as a rule, a written one) is the size and style of the type, its color, the use of punctuation and sometimes mathematical signs and other paralinguistic means.
The aforementioned allows us to point out another aspect of a creolized text analysis -the description of the paralinguistic means of the text. As a rule, the keen interest of researchers is focused on the color and font used to create the text under consideration. Color is one of the most important elements of a creolized text: it attracts attention of the recipient (fulfilling its attractive function), it allows to underline the most significant, meaningful elements of the verbal component (its conceptual function), and it also affects human emotions (its expressive function). Linguists emphasize the symbolic function of color, its ability to express abstract concepts (Anisimova, 2003; Baskakov, 19967; Kondakov, 1990; Mironova, 1984; Padham, 1978).
The printed edition's choice of a definite font and type style has a significant influence on the recipient's subconscious as the type itself is a form of social coding, it shows the individual's belonging to definite social classes and groups (Sigman, Anisimova, Tulupov, Smirnov). Using different fonts has definite reasons. It reveals the aims that the recipient sets and that define the main functions of a font as an element of a creo-lized text. Among the functions, the attractive, intensifying, expressive, characteristic, symbolic, satirical, and esthetic ones are distinguished [1:64].
In the field of psycholinguistics, the interest to creolized texts is motivated by the tendency to figure out the role of nonverbal means in conceptual perception of a text (Golovina, 1986; Zuev, 1981; Sorokin, Tarasov, 1990). The non-homogenous parts in the structure of a creolized text are considered one of the means to create communicative intensity both in the text space and in the space of those who perceive the text. E.A. Lazareva calls such technique "where one conceptual field overlaps the other one and both are integrated and interpreted by a recipient as one universal text" the technique of cognitive collision; it is effectively used as a means of manipulation and influence on the recipient's conscience.
There is an initial thesis in psycholinguistic studies of a creolized texts which states that information (both verbal and nonverbal) perceived through different channels is processed in the same universal-presentive code of thinking [9:83]. At that, there is no gross difference between the semantics of such signs on the level of language semantics. However, special studies show that verbally and nonverbally conveyed information is differently perceived by the recipient. For example, only 7% of information contained directly in the text message is digested, voice characteristics increase the number to 38%, while an image brings the number to 55%.
проелемы современного осрпзоопнип
It is also important to point out that while a verbally represented information influences the individual's consciousness in a rational way, paralinguistic means in their turn automatically switch the perception to the subconscious level. Besides, the verbal means mainly convey the information about the outer world while the nonverbal means - about the emotional side of communication.
On the other hand, some researchers think that using an image in a verbal text makes the text less emotional, reducing its informational content and persuasiveness. The reason of it is in psychological characteristics of perception of a creolized text: the recipient perceiving the text without an image attributes to it such characteristics that are not only contained in the text itself but also in the recipient's conceptual system, worldview. Using an image limits text perception, leads to the recipient's conceptual code transformation, narrowing the conceptual field, thereby reducing the capacity to interpret the text.
Considering all the extreme points of view, it still remains undeniable that a creolized text as an integrated text is perceived in the process of double coding of the information it contains: while retrieving the concept of the image, it overlaps the concept of the verbal text, the interaction of the two concepts leads to forming one united concept of the creolized text. The discourses of different texts mix, and as a result, the recipient perceives a double information: the obvious meaning of the direct discourse and the meaning of the hidden discourse meant to attain the author's true aims.
A microblog is one of the examples of a creolized text which contains various codes. The numerical analysis of this type of mediatexts (270 microblog posts) shows the following:
29,2% - posts with verbal texts and links to verbal texts (a link being a visual code);
22,2% - microblogs that only contain verbal texts;
13,3% - posts with verbal texts and images (a picture or a screenshot);
9,6% - microblogs with verbal texts, links to verbal texts, and images;
9,3 % - posts with verbal texts and links to videos;
7,4% - posts with hashtags (a hashtag being a visual code);
3.7% - microblogs with the so called smileys or emoticons;
2.6% - microblogs with just images;
1.9% - posts typed in capital letters (which in the Internet language is considered to be be yelling, especially in the post of personal character);
0.7. - posts which contain verbal texts, links to videos, and images.
As the numbers above show, only one third of the microblog texts represent information in the form of a "classical" verbal text. Modern technologies gives us a new type of creolized texts with photo and video content. The next step of such a research can be the study of phycolinguistic reactions of the readers to the microblog posts as compared to the readers' reactions to verbal texts.
Literature:
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№ 2 - V I.
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