Article.
Alina
Guseva
УДК 81’373.232
WAYS OF PRESENTATION LINGUISTIC
IDENTITY IN THE VIRTUAL DISCOURSE
Peculiarities of language usage in the internet are analyzed. Nicknames used by Ukrainians in their own blogs are
described. The key methods of classification based on linguistic features are
considered. The necessity of integrated approach to the consideration of names
used to identification and self-presentation is proved.
Keywords:
antroponimical formula, code
switching, computer-mediated
communication, language shared code, netspeak, nickname.
The boundaries of functioning of the proper nouns are
constantly expanding, as
evidenced by today’s realities. Active implementation
of the internet technologies
in everyday life has led to the formation of a separate virtual discourse. It should
be noted that we understand discourse as "language
of life",
text that "immersed in the life"
[Арутюнова
1990: 136]. A
discourse is "the focus of
language and speech actions, socio-cultural and
pragmatic, cognitive and psychological factors... interweaving interactions of agents communication language"
[Павленко
2005: 2].
Virtual discourse is an
environment in which modern language is
developing rapidly. Internet is the
widest communicative space in
which its functioning is nothing stops
there. Research of virtual discourse today is the
actual linguistic problems
[Асмус
2005; Виноградова
2004; Лутовинова
2007; Ходоренко
2006; Ярошенко
2009; Block 2004; Crystal 2004]. Modern language
and speech tendencies
appear exactly in the internet communications. Therefore,
investigation of the functioning of proper
nouns in the
internet is the urgent task of modern onomastics.
Purpose of research is to
review the ways of presentation of
virtual linguistic identity. Purpose is realized by
performing the following tasks: 1) analysis of the problem of the
various languages in the
internet and the language code
switching; 2) generalization of
specific language features in the internet, compared
with the types of
spoken and written speech; 3)
distinction of the approaches to classification
nicknames as specific internet-names of users. The material of research is database on 396 nicknames that are
functioned in the internet-portal: http://blog.i.ua/.
The internet as the major
example of new electronic information and communication technologies, in fact,
affects patterns of the language usage in many aspects. On the one hand, it
seems to support the trends of linguistic standardization which accompany the
more general processes of globalization, for example, the spread of English as
a lingua franca of the
Internet. On the other hand, the internet may actually support the maintenance
of the local minority languages in situations, where access to national spheres
of communication is restricted and conventional resources for storing
multilingual information are scarce. D. Block shows that there is little
consensus on the definition of globalization and no agreement at all on whether
it is a beneficial or malevolent force in the world [Block 2004]. Despite a
variety of views, all commentators agree that globalization is characterized by
unprecedented flows of information, exchanges among different groups and
networks that transcend the local and national. As D. Crystal said, "there is a widely
held intuition that some sort of Netspeak exists" [Crystal 2004: 18]
– a type of language displaying features that are unique to the internet, and
encountered in all the above situations, arising out of its character as a
medium which is electronic, global, and interactive. The distinct between
purposes and procedures involved in e-mailing, chatgroups, virtual worlds, and
the Web makes for significant differences between them.
There are a lot of specific netspeak features: electronic
form of information, interactivity, hypertext, multimedia, variable nature of communication (synchrony or asynchrony) and variable status of communicants.
All these facts give wide possibilities for demonstrating different language
behavior by users. H. Kelly-Holmes reports on the findings from
the questionnaire in eight of the ten countries [Kelly-Holmes 2004]. She recounts
what the university undergraduates were doing during their last ten sessions in
the internet, and what language they were using to do it. As they were all
literate in the language of their national education system and with some
knowledge of English, their language repertoires gave them some degree of
choice in the channels that they could exploit in the internet.
H. Kelly-Holmes underlines that the tendency to use English correlates
closely with the first language of the respondent and that it is not really
possible to talk of global tendencies in behavior [Kelly-Holmes 2004]. Emailing family
and friends in the languages that respondents usually use with these groups is
the prime activity in this area. And where they use English (or less frequently
another international lingua franca),
the reasons are not always because they are contacting others across language
boundaries. Sometimes the topic of the message dictates the language used, with
those studying through English at university tending to use this language to
discuss information acquired through English. Here some scientists suspect a
large degree of code switching, since users report a lot of dual language use
within the same session [Kelly-Holmes
2004]. This is an interesting aspect of the Internet since written language has
not traditionally been a medium which admits switching and one which merits
further investigation. The term "netspeak" is an alternative to
"Netlish" or "Internet language", "cyberspeak",
"computer-mediated communication" (CMC), and other more cumbersome
locutions [Crystal 2004: 17].
Linguistic identity of the
virtual person can be represented by the
concept of mask, which is
understood as a characteristic that reflects individual linguistic behavior of
communicants.
People use different means to underline their individuality: an unusual username or nickname, a
bright avatar, some spelling
errors, certain symbols and abbreviations.
In this situation name functions is a mediator between
the sender and the
addressee of virtual communication.
"The problem of encoding
/ decoding information carried
by the name is closely related
to the specific environment in which this name
operates" [Балкунова 2012]. The notion of shared linguistic code is actualized in terms of
virtual communication. After all, understanding between communicators in the network can happen only when the language they
use is comprehensible for both of them. For investigating
the role of a name as an intermediary between subjects of communication, it is important to describe
features of nickname and login as
examples of virtual identity’s code.
There is a problem of ratio between the user’s intention (encoding)
and the degree of recipient’s perception (decoding) in the virtual
communication. The main differences are determined by different communication
strategies – self-presentation (image of "Me") on the one hand, and
identification (image of "He / She"), on the other hand.
"Cognitive activity
of both subjects of communication is
manifested in the creation of
personal image. As a
result, there is parameterization "own" and
"alien" [Балкунова 2012: 12]. It is
important to note that the communication
strategy of self-presentation in the
construction of the concept of
"Me" is implemented in the
pragmatic information of a linguistic
sign – a name, whereas
the strategy of
knowledge operates
with cognitive memory, which interprets
semantic characteristics of the
linguistic sign [Воркачев 2001: 65-66].
W. Millard uses the term "metacommunicative
minimalism" for speech in cyberspace
explaining it as follows: "Textual cyberspace
filters out personal, identifying, emotionally-colored items... Phatic and
metacommunicative signals, linguistic and paralinguistic signs that indicate
the social relations between sender and addressee,
are sharply reduced in this environment" [Millard 2007]. However, in our opinion, this statement is quite conventional nowadays. In fact,
communication in the internet today is an extremely branched diversity of speech genres,
according to the ways of communication and
specific tools which are available to the user change.
Language presented in the CMC is
called language centaur,
i.e. it combines the features of different speech genres [Crystal 2004]. It should be
noted that netspeak is a synthetic, organic combination, not artificial
one. This is not just a hybrid of spoken and written
text. So netspeak, as defined by D. Crystal and others, is actually another new environment.
The fictional world, the atricalization, unlimited virtual
space provides virtual discourse stylistic originality
[Асмус 2005: 83]. Getting into the virtual world, user wants to realize his / her creative abilities, which
allows him / her to behave the way he / she wants, to say what he /
she wants and the way how he
/ she can do it. "A specific of new environment dictates the
rules of language and behavior" [Crystal 2004: 63].
"To put on a mask means to reincarnate,
i.e. to have unlimited
possibilities in the choice of
language, and thus forget about responsibility
for the spoken word" [Scheidt 2001]. Virtual communicants are not real people,
they are masks or roles. Therefore,
it is important to identify personality through a vivid nick or avatar.
Synchronous
and asynchronous CMC environments have opened new channels for people to
explore their personality. In this medium they engage in written conversations
under a nickname, "a participant selected
name used to disguise their real identity" [Scheidt 2001]. In
the virtual internet-world users meet and talk about their lives, their
personal problems, their activities or nothing in particular. In this way CMC
mirrors real life face-to-face dialogue.
Many of
CMC’s unique qualities revolve around the fact that it is an austere mode of
communication. Nickname becomes the participant’s identifier. Nicknames can be
very fluid, and are easily and quickly changed to meet the participant’s needs
or desires.
Communication
in the internet space allows participants to communicate in the relative safety
of anonymity. CMC participants, bereft of nonverbal cues, may engage in "selective self-promotion"
[Scheidt
2001].
Without visual clues and societal norms gender becomes more malleable in CMC. "Nicknames are used as stand-ins for the participant
in their process of self-promotion, as signs. The metaphor of standing-in for
is the basis of the observation that signs are used to infer something not
directly perceptible, or not directly obvious, from something that simply is" [Ахренова 2009]. Therein lays the point of sign use, representational conceptions of
signs, construing their perceptibility as a replacement or representative of
that which is not directly perceptible: the expression stands for that which is
meant.
Virtual nicknames and nicks in the real life are different.
The user invents a
nickname for him depending on professional activity, emotional
state, life situation, etc. Accordingly, researchers primarily interest
in the reasons that have led to the
formation of nickname. It is
difficult to determine the motivation of such nicknames as Aprel8, Azorel, Fallen_Man, SerjSh, etc. Thus, from the point of motivation it would
be correct to allocate motivated and unmotivated
nicknames. However, this approach does not always justify itself, because motivation
can vary, and
sometimes it is absent.
Gender related classification
is the most clear.
"From early childhood, individuals learn to signal their gender identity in
accord with gender stereotypes. They learn to perform "masculinity"
or "femininity" [Ходоренко 2006]. Separation into male and female
names is doubtless (especially when an icon next to the name identifies sex). But
sometimes a nickname is not correlated with
either male or with
female by its semantic content (ReLLe, e n g, Mir_tobi_ua, Hana Mana),
so it falls in the third
category – unknown gender. However,
the number of nicknames that do not
fall under one of two categories
is very significant (see Table 1),
and therefore requires more
detailed classification within this
"indeterminate" group.
We have identified such
distinctive features of the sense female
and male nicknames: women
prefer diminutives (NynUshka, Yagusya), hypocoristic names that emphasize beauty, sexuality (Mila, Rassvetnaya_, Milady, sonce-33, AprilLove); men names express a sense of superiority over others (Rabynovich, votre reve), rudeness or, conversely, romance (prince).
Considering the usernames from the
perspective of their use, we concluded
that, as a rule, they
do not correspond with the image
of the user in real life, but rather indicate that the user is a complete contrast to image created on the network.
Table 1. Gender
Classification of Nicknames
Gender
|
Totals
|
Male
|
112
|
Female
|
150
|
Unknown gender
|
134
|
The semantic classification of male and female nicknames is presented in
Table 2 and Table 3.
Table 2. Classification
of Male Nicknames
Nicknames
|
Totals
|
Percentages
|
Actual name / Nickname (diminutive)
|
71
|
63.39%
|
Self-character traits
|
28
|
25.00%
|
Typography
|
22
|
19.64%
|
Sex-related
|
13
|
11.61%
|
Famous people /
groups
|
11
|
9.82%
|
Tagged as
belonging to a "gang" or group
|
9
|
8.04%
|
Age related
|
6
|
5.36%
|
Literature,
fairy tales, characters from films, plays, television
|
6
|
5.36%
|
Provocative
|
5
|
4.46%
|
Place names
|
4
|
3.57%
|
Relationships to others
|
4
|
3.57%
|
Technology related
|
4
|
3.57%
|
Inanimate objects
|
3
|
2.68%
|
Flora & fauna
|
2
|
1.79%
|
Meta comment on
the anonymity of the medium
|
2
|
1.79%
|
Ethereal
|
1
|
0.89%
|
Multiple chatters
|
1
|
0.89%
|
Popular sayings
|
1
|
0.89%
|
Social / status comments
|
1
|
0.89%
|
Onomatopoeia
|
0
|
0.00%
|
Table 3. Classification
of Female Nicknames
Nicknames
|
Totals
|
Percentages
|
Actual name / Nickname (diminutive)
|
95
|
63.33%
|
Typography
|
77
|
51.33%
|
Self-character traits
|
43
|
28.67%
|
Age related
|
22
|
14.67%
|
Sex-related
|
22
|
14.67%
|
Provocative
|
15
|
10.00%
|
Literature, fairy tales, characters from
films, plays, television
|
13
|
8.67%
|
Social / status comments
|
13
|
8.67%
|
Flora & fauna
|
8
|
5.33%
|
Relationships to others
|
8
|
5.33%
|
Inanimate objects
|
4
|
2.67%
|
Famous people / groups
|
3
|
2.00%
|
Ethereal
|
2
|
1.33%
|
Multiple chatters
|
2
|
1.33%
|
Onomatopoeia
|
2
|
1.33%
|
Popular sayings
|
2
|
1.33%
|
Technology related
|
2
|
1.33%
|
Metacomment on the anonymity of the medium
|
0
|
0.00%
|
Place names
|
0
|
0.00%
|
Tagged as belonging to a "gang" or
group
|
0
|
0.00%
|
So, nicknames can express desired traits,
not just real ones. Thus, the
user extols or even advertises
himself. A nickname
is not a real face of the user, as
N. Asmus writes in more details [Асмус 2005].
In our
opinion, one of the objective approaches to the classification of nicknames is
division into single and multiple units. This separation is
applied by linguists [Асмус 2005; Ермолович 2001; Балкунова 2012] in the anthroponomy analysis. So, antroponim is single when in the users’ language consciousness it is correlated with particular person (eg, Platon,
Shakespeare, Napoleon). Modern names are not unique because they belong to multiple people (eg, John, Mary, Ivanov, Smiths, etc). But every user wants to ensure that his name was single, original. This is why nickname correlated with anthroponim is changed in different ways.
Username can be transformed (eg, La-roch-ka, victor_i_YA, Valenta, PetrenkoPS, e n d, olx, egorka-klim). Classification of
names regarding to anthroponimical formula is presented in the investigation
made by N. Yaroshenko [Ярошенко 2009]. It seems relevant to use this
approach to nicknames’ classification. Most people add to anthroponims signed
number to stand out
from the masses (Grigorij202, Valenta123, svetik05). It makes
the name unique.
So, it is important for linguists to analyze the form of nicknames, not just
their meaning.
The next
approach to classification – division into situational and non-situational
nicknames – due to the fact that each individual situation dictates its
own rules, and communicators can have multiple nicknames. Situational nickname
is the common noun used for the nomination. It succinctly describes the person.
Nickname ceases to be situational, when it is assigned to the user and other
users start to recognize and differentiate him by this nickname. Situational
nicknames are based on random features and various associations. If the nick
begins to be used regularly (becomes non-situational), it bonds with the
primary motive for the nomination is eventually lost. However, it is difficult to
determine is the concrete name situational or not (eg, l_skywalker, Man-go). It is necessary to conduct additional survey of users. Thus, analysis of different approaches to
classification of nicknames shows the imperfection of each of them. It emphasizes the need
for systematic consideration
of these onomastic units based on communicative pragmatic and psycholinguistic aspects. In our opinion, system
analysis of nicknames should include determination of the following parameters:
is unit one-word, two-word or wordy in its structure; is it motivated or not;
situational or nonsituational; is it correlated with common or proper noun; if
it is correlated with anthroponim, which anthroponimical formula corresponds to
the nickname. Today, we have a large database for further study on classification nicknames
and expanding the criteria for their detailed specifications. Analysis of
nicknames helps to understand the specifics of the virtual linguistic identity
and particularities of its presentation.
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Sources and
Abbreviations
Blogs of Ukrainians. – Access mode : URL : http://blog.i.ua/. – Title from the screen.
Проаналізовано особливості використання мови в Інтернеті. Описано
ніконіми, використовувані українцями у власних блогах. Розглянуто основні підходи до класифікації інтернет-імен, засновані на лінгвістичних особливостях. Доведено необхідність комплексного
підходу до розгляду імен, використовуваних для ідентифікації
і презентації віртуальної мовної особистості.
Ключові слова:
комп'ютерно-опосередкована комунікація,
мова інтернету, спільний мовний код, перемикання кодів, ніконім, антропонімічна формула.
Available 12 September 2013.
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