CC BY
37THE LINGUISTIC COMPRESSION WAYS Yatsyuk K.A.
Yatsyuk Ksenia Aleksandrovna - B.A. of Philology, FACULTY OF THE HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, M.A. Student,
PEOPLES FRIENDSHIP UNIVERSITY OF RUSSIA, MOSCOW
Abstract: in the article is analysed a small sphere of a compression phenomenon. Today we are used to compressing our thoughts and do not pay attention to the way we make our messages short. The article is dedicated to several compression ways with the emphasis on «emoji» - the young and developing element of communication. Keywords: emoji, linguistic compression, communication, mass media.
Compression is a very wide notion - it implied different language level transformations starting from the word-level transformations to the transformations of the whole text. Linguistic compression is used overall - in oral and written discourse, in formal and in informal text materials, every year it expands and deepens its sphere of influence.
Today compression is widely applied in the language of mass media. Analysing the mass-media sphere we take into consideration different magazines and internet editions, as well as the range of social networks that are quickly becoming the main field for self-expression, communication and advertising. Mass-media is the general resource of new language transformations and new language constructions that subsequently are included in the language corpora.
So, we consider social networks as the specific kind of mass media, and on the basis of Internet resources we would make an attempt to identify several ways of compressing the information, grading them by priority (the frequency of use by Internet users). Considering the intention to make an article actual we base our findings on resources from such social networks as Vkontakte, Instagram, Twitter - the most popular networks of our time (as for the social network Vkontakte - it is the most popular social network in Russia, not in the whole world).
The first way to mention should be the most obvious way of linguistic compression that meet the word language level compression. The evidences of wide spreading of such way could be found in every social network. People compress words: instead of «спасибо» they write «спс» in Russian, as well as instead of «thank you» they write «thnx» in English.
The second way is breaking the sentence structure - the abundance of incomplete sentences, mass avoiding of punctuation. Interestingly, these features of mass media language are the characteristic of public dialogue and are mostly avoid in the private correspondence. We could observe the audience-orientated compression that is used to catch the eye and attract public's attention. The bright example is the advertising-like twit of Russian showman Pavel Volya in the social network Twitter: « @RealVolya: Всем пятница! Новый Камеди. Сегодня в 21:00 на ТНТ!». In that message we could observe an incomplete sentence as well as the parcelling method. Incomplete sentences are used overall by different generations. If in the previous example we looked at the message of an adult, now we could see, how a teenager breaks the sentence structure: «@Kate_Clapp: Вчера - записала видео. Сегодня - ещё одно! Завтра монтаж!». The point is that the audience of these people doesn't look at these messages as at the linguistic phenomenon. We could again stress the fact of the linguistic compression ordinariness. It is worthy to mention that we presented two messages of people who are extremely popular in Russia, especially in social networks, and these people could be considered as the litmus test of the state of modern language, because we could be sure that people follow them and their manners of communication.
The sentence-breach in of the great importance but we should finally mention todays prevailing way of linguistic compression that deserves a separate discussion. We are going to analyse the emoji phenomenon. Despite the fact of global use of emojis and their undeniable
popularity, the emoji-phenomenon is still largely-unexplored. Popova S. N. has mentioned that modern way of compression that is appeared with the release of phones with touch-screen and tablets. We could suppose that emoji present an independent and unique class of buzz words and the unique way of compressing people's thoughts. That assumptions could seem very controversial because emojis are not words. However, emojis are the bright example of the compression and probably in the nearest future they could be considered as a special language if their expansion continues. If later emojis were used "generally during an informal communication for making a message more emotional and interesting" [1, c. 116], today emojis could appear even on the television or in famous Internet magazines. The bright example of emoji-spreading is the cartoon dedicated to emoji that released in 2017: "The Emoji Movie".
Emojis are an autonomous mean of communication that today lets people to communicate even without using the words. Nowadays the situation when you receive an emoji as an answer for your message is normal, because with the help of emojis you could express your feelings and thoughts about any received news. An emoji has several functions that are constantly developing:
- emojis replace words. So, they shorten the transferred message;
- generally, emojis ease the perception of the message (if we don't deal with a symbol with many connotations);
- emojis make a message more expressive despite the lack of information;
- emoji could visually show the physical state and gestures of your interlocutor - the thing a regular text-message is unable to implement.
So, people codify their feelings or emotions in one "symbol" (emoji): «We mostly use emojis like gestures, as a way of enhancing emotional expressions» [3]. According to the present situation emoji could be named the future of compression, because simultaneously with being a small symbol, it continues to develop. For example, IT specialists of Apple company have improved emojis to make them more "live" - in the latest IOS update an emoji could copy your mimics. So, you could express your own emotions instead of choosing one more appropriate from the range of emojis. If some years ago we could not imagine that the new way of linguistic compression is possible, today we use it and participate in its evolution. Emoji itself is not a word but in this small symbol sometimes are codified many more than one word.
The overall tendency to brevity and compression that we have observed is not spontaneous; it is reinforced by several characteristics of our time. For example, the industry of on-line computer games is prospering and growing. The huge stake of all games accounts for group games that include interaction between players. As these games are very dynamic (shooters etc) "players should exchange short and informative messages while playing". Online games are one of the richest sources of compressed words. Despite gamers are the big part of Internet-society, they are only the element in compression developing. The largest source of new language transformations are teenagers, who are the most active Internet users. Among them we could find the most popular bloggers, video-makers and streamers, who make a valuable contribution to the modern language including the expansion of language transformation range.
References
1. Popova S. Individual approach to education of modern youth (Generation Z).
Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016. 6.
2. Kaye Linda K., Malone Stephanie A., Wall Helen J. Emojis: Insights, Affordances, and
Possibilities for Psychological Science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2017. 21 (2): 66
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.10.007.
3. Cell Press. "Why scientists should research emojis and emoticons: P.". ScienceDaily.
ScienceDaily, 17 January 2017. [Electronic resource]. URL:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170117140140.htm/ (date of access:
29.12.2017).
