On Speech, Written and Digital Language from Biocognitivism in Modern Language Studies

Author(s):  O.A. Karamalak, candidate of Sciences, associate Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, okaramalak@hse.ru

E.V. Pozhidaeva, candidate of Sciences, associate Professor, Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, Moscow, Russia, EVPozhidaeva@pushkin.institute

Issue:  Volume 38, № 1

Rubric:  Linguistics

Annotation:  Contemporary philosophy of language studies a broad range of questions connected with the functioning of language in the environment. There can be singled out three paradigms of language existence: speech, written language, and digital language. Diachronically language appeared and initially existed in the form of speech. The paper regards speech as a biological ability of social adaptation in language environment having an orienting function. With the advent of writing, people entered into a textual environment. Written language is an artifact, a part and parcel of our life. Nowadays, we witness a new era of digital language and virtual environment. Digital language is seen to be interactive, dialogical, iconic, being a hybrid of written and oral types of languages. A digital/electronic text is simiotically charged with icons types of fonts, color, position, pictures and videos. The paper presents a discourse analysis triggered by the creolized text post on Facebook. Semiotically speaking, a creolized text forms a unity of verbal and non-verbal constituents which afford an observer to be part of it and interpret it. In case of Facebook posting, discourse is distributed and expanded because many people can see or take part in it. The example brought in the paper shows that the discourse unfolding on the timeline is not necessarily linear because it can spread in branches or shorter discourses. A post can encourage Facebook users to expand it into a discourse or even many discourses. Commenters use colloquial language, emotionally charged with emoji (smiles), morphological, lexical, and semantic means.

Keywords:  oral language, speech, written language, text, digital, electronic, virtual language

Full text (PDF):  Download

Downloads count:  253