On the issue of methodological reasons for language purism in Internet communications

Barebina Natal'ya Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0001-5883-6773 Doctor of Philology Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, "Irkutsk State Transport University" 15 Chernyshevsky Street, Irkutsk, Irkutsk region, 664074, Russia svirel23@rambler.ru Other publications by this author     Glyzina Vera Evgen'evna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages for Special Purposes, Baikal State University 11 Lenin Street, Irkutsk, Irkutsk region, 664003, Russia GlyzinaVE@bgu.ru

Skopinceva Tatiana Anatol'yevna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Irkutsk State Transport University 15 Chernyshevsky Street, Irkutsk, Irkutsk region, 664074, Russia skopinceva_ta@irgups.ru

Introduction. The modern communication environment is a source of new linguistic objects, representing both social and discursive realities corresponding to them, as well as phenomena in the form of textual linguistic facts. One of these objects, which requires understanding both theoretically and methodologically, is the phenomenon of electronic speech. This phenomenon should be considered in the triad "speech — writing — electronic speech". In general, the electronic form of speech is a convenient and widely used method of communication in the modern information society, which allows people to quickly exchange information and ideas in writing. For all its convenience and functionality, electronic speech has long been a concern not so much for linguists as for the Network users themselves. Forms of linguistic purism are indicative, such as the Gramar-Nazi movement, whose members fight for strict observance of the norms of their native language on any resources. Such movements are a kind of haterism on the Internet and messengers, which uses the norms of the Russian language as an excuse to attack writers. Although there is, of course, a rational grain in the arguments of literacy advocates on social networks. Fears that if everyone writes as he pleases, this will lead to the degradation of the language and the loss of national identity, correlate with the urgent problem of the state of the language environment, which is becoming unfavorable for society. Many researchers note a direct connection between the field of language and the development of human consciousness, reason, and intelligence ^{[4, 5, 7, 9]}. The purity of language and its pollution, "speech garbage", degradation and prosperity, development and regression — these ideas about the interaction of language as a system with the activities of native speakers are presented in the direction of linguoecology. In our opinion, linguists should develop a collective opinion on this issue, especially since the vector of social order from native speakers of the Russian language, concerned about its fate, is shifting towards destructive criticism instead of feasible assistance.

The research material. This article is based on the texts of news aggregators, the Yandex Zen platform, works of art, and transcripts of oral speech. To study linguistic processes, we analyzed the views of linguists who reveal the concept of linguistic error and recorded cases of errors of various types in texts using stylistic, contextual, syntactic, semantic, punctuation analysis of text fragments. The empirical base of the study was 642 examples of violations of the norms of the Russian language. The appeal to the Yandex Zen feed is due to the fact that this personal recommendation service is a popular platform among representatives of the media sphere in Russia. Not only bloggers have channels on the Internet resource, but also well-known mass media. Bloggers use Zen as a new way to promote author's content, and the platform acts as a free advertising space for the media.

The concept of linguistic error.

In order to present the concept of linguistic error, we turned to the work of N. N. Rogoznaya, who defines linguistic error as "a functional violation of speech (wave) segments, entailing a distorted idea of the object of cognition (language)" ^[12]. Linguistic errors in texts can be diverse, and their classifications are also numerous ^{[13, 19, 20, 21]}, sometimes the grounds for error classification overlap. There are mistakes that only well-read people can discern. For example, lexical repetition, especially if the same—root words have different meanings and belong to different parts of speech, for example: She decided that she would no longer live here - she wants more from life. Or the incorrect use of the tense forms of the verb. But, as the material of the article shows, language works on the Web do not involve complex constructions, and errors are quite simple. We have listed common linguistic errors, grouping them into several categories.

Spelling errors: These are errors related to the correct spelling of words. For example, come, appeal, thorough.

Grammatical errors: These are errors related to the use of grammatical rules. These include the misuse of tenses, declensions, cases, and concordances. For example: After conducting a survey, determine what the client lacks: finances, human resources, competencies.

Punctuation errors: these are errors related to the incorrect use of punctuation marks: commas, dots, dashes, exclamation marks. For example, what is all this for!? Instead of what is it all for?!

Syntactic errors: these are errors related to violations of syntax rules, such as incorrect alignment, control, word order in a sentence, incorrect sentence construction. For example, to understand that ..., approaching the city, a snowstorm began.

Semantic errors: these are errors related to incorrect choice or use of words, which leads to incorrect transmission of meaning. For example, a picture with nuclear energy.

Stylistic errors: these are errors related to inconsistencies in the style and tone of the text, inappropriate choice of words or expressions. For example, put on a hat, make a fuss in a businesslike way, improve the level.

Phonetic errors: these are errors related to the incorrect pronunciation of words. In writing, it may look like an accidental rhyme or dissonance.

Electronic communication. Modern linguistic research has formed a certain scientific context for describing and understanding the phenomenon of electronic communication ^{[3, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15]}. It can be presented in the form of the following theses.

Electronic communication is a new type of speech, in the terminology of different authors ("electronic speech", "live written speech", "written spoken speech"). The appearance of this form of communication has become a sign of the formation of a human Network, where technology has opened access to the previously closed sphere of the written word.

Electronic speech only formally refers to written speech. In fact, it is characterized by features that are not inherent in written speech at all. These include the reproduction of phonetic, word-formation, lexical, and grammatical features of oral speech.

Errors in electronic speech are a common occurrence. Despite the fact that there is a network etiquette, one of the rules of which is the recommendation not to forget about spelling and punctuation, users regularly make gross mistakes. The general opinion about errors in electronic speech is that there is nothing positive about them: the need to decipher carelessly written text irritates the audience, efforts are required to understand the meaning of a text with errors, grammatical errors distract, contribute to the spread of illiteracy.

Let's take an example

(1) Actor's Notes

Hi! My name is Sergey Marochkin and I am an actor. I work in the theater and act in films. On the channel you will find stories from acting life – funny and not so funny, thoughts about different things and other interesting things. I promise sincerity and positivity. Subscribe!

(2) About private actor's parties and what's going on at them

(3) The actors who have served time and how their time in the zone affects them

(4) Three stories of how I almost disrupted performances due to carelessness

(5) How I changed my shoes and there was betrayal: about Alexey Gorbunov, his goals and my mistake

(6) Culture against, 200 for, 2000 against: Zakhar Prilepin on how few cultural figures support our government

(7) And what am I being canceled for?: Alexey Serebryakov is perplexed by the anger of the audience and the cancellations of performances

(8) I took clear days for myself: Billions from the budget to Gazmanov and other artists, and they collect armored vests on credit and all the people

(9) The imposed fashion for mediocrity and freaks

Example (1) shows the introduction to the actor's channel. We see two mistakes — there is no comma before the conjunction and, which connects the grammatical foundations, and the pronoun You, which is capitalized only when addressing one person personally.

Examples (2-9) are the headlines of publications on the channel of this actor. There are one or two mistakes in each subtitle: (2), (3), (6) — punctuation errors; (7) — punctuation and lexical errors. Examples (4) and (5) are semantic errors, it is not clear what the headings are about. Example (8) contains a spelling and punctuation error, and (9) contains a grammatical error. The examples generally illustrate the thesis that electronic speech is a projection of the norms of oral colloquial speech, which is characterized by linguistic emancipation. It is noteworthy that none of the actor's subscribers, and there are more than a million of them (195.7K subscribers), pointed out these shortcomings in the comments. Obviously, the audience in this case does not expect the actor to comply with the rules of spelling and punctuation.

Agreeing with the opinion of experts who point out that errors in network communication are a negative phenomenon, we point to a paradoxical situation that requires no less attention from both linguists and adherents of the struggle for literacy. Indeed, the text field of the language that a modern person is dealing with is represented by the blogosphere, social networks, video hosting sites with the possibility of comments, where everyone can express their opinion. In this area of communication, you can put things in order and talk about content moderation strategies.

However, is everything good in the segment of texts presented by official publications? A cursory glance is enough to understand that this is not the case. Here are some examples:

(10) An unusual phenomenon in 620 could be the northern lights, caught in the zone of a powerful magnetic storm. Astronomers have solved the mystery of the "red fan" in the sky over Japan;

(11) According to Douglas McGregor, Washington is currently trying to avoid a complete fiasco;

(12) The largest retail chains decided to abandon Turkish tomatoes due to Erdogan's support for the Palestinians;

(13) An illustrative moment is the second penalty against Argentina with the score 3:2.;

(14) At the moment, there are from five hundred to a thousand Russian tourists in the resorts of Turkey, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia said.

Examples 10-14 represent various errors in the texts of the official media.

Let's take another example (15).

"They told me," he persisted, "that you were holding a girl from Earth captive, even though a truce had been announced. This is Scarlet Benoit, a citizen of the European Federation. I want to know if it's true and where she is now.

Levana laughed.

"I assure you, there is no prisoner of that name here.

Her laughter made Kai angry. He didn't believe her. Did Levana mean that Scarlet was dead? Or is she no longer in the palace? Or not in Artemisia at all?

It is very unfortunate that the girl, whose real name is Lin Zola and who is wanted by the Moon and Earth police, decided to use this tragic story to her advantage.

On the pages of the popular volume from the cycle "Lunar Chronicles" by M. Meyer, translated into Russian, we find three errors on two pages.

Discussion. Many researchers have been dealing with problems of violation of spelling norms. Thus, the most accurate definition of spelling is presented in the works of N. S. Valgina, D. E. Rosenthal, M. I. Fomina, who call spelling a system of rules about the spelling of words and their significant parts, about fused, separate and hyphenated spellings, about the use of capital letters and word hyphenation. The study of this issue allowed scientists to conclude that "it is quite natural for spelling to constantly lag behind the development of the language's sound system, however, the current spelling rules remain equally mandatory for all writers, as only under this condition is it possible to freely communicate between members of society using written speech" ^{[2, p. 139]}. As for punctuation, the most accurate, in our opinion, is the definition of N. S. Valgina and V. N. Svetlysheva. By punctuation, the authors understand, firstly, the collection of punctuation rules and, secondly, the punctuation marks themselves, their totality. The authors point out that the purpose of punctuation is "to serve as a means of separating written speech, to indicate the separation of semantic, structural and intonation" ^[1].

Electronic written speech is only at first glance identical to written normative speech. It is an established fact in linguistics that writing and speaking are different cognitive domains. "Natural (sound) and written language are separate sign systems that differ in the most significant way," notes A.V. Kravchenko ^{[8, p. 59]}. M.-T. Fester-Seeger writes about the tendentiousness of linguistics, understanding by this the tendency of scientists to interpret language as a stable autonomous entity, and not as something arising from the interaction of subjects with each other and with objects of the world ^[16]. Despite this, there is a clear methodological discrepancy, expressed in the fact that, even realizing the primacy of spoken language, we have been accustomed since school to apply the standards of written language to it, and, consequently, priority, as P. Linell notes in his works ^{[17, 18]}, is given to written language. On the other hand, oral speech is so dynamic and elusive that it is quite difficult to hold and fix it for analysis. This is confirmed by any attempts to make a transcript of oral presentations, the result of which will be a text that is not understandable without video recording. Let's offer as an example a small fragment of the transcript of the defense of a PhD thesis from our personal file.

(16) Therefore, how to say, I made a certain remark, that a certain design... Well, now, back to what I started. Yes, I will vote for it. Because everything I wanted to say, I said. The work is serious, good, and strong. No, it's not that, it's not even that. I'm talking about the volume of the normative abstract again. If we include all the publications here, we will go beyond the volume again. Therefore, we, among others ..., also try not to enter everything, so as not to go beyond the regulated volume. So, of course, you will enter a kilometer, you will get 26 pages ..., you will get a possible remark. Why is this necessary? My colleagues, everything is within the framework of the discussion. Yes, a word for answers to the remark in general, to the questions that were in the discussion, please, to the applicant. As you can see, this fragment, from the point of view of written language norms, contains repetitions, incorrect word order, and the absence of a predicate. We have arranged the punctuation approximately based on the pauses in speech. Oral spontaneous speech, even in highly institutional contexts, is difficult to dissect using written signs. Thus, it makes no sense to apply the standards of only literary written language to "written colloquial speech".

Concluding the article, we will express the opinion that modern realities present unlimited opportunities for speech creation to all users of Internet resources. And most often this innovation is accompanied by a deviation from the norms of the written language. But for linguists, this language material serves as a kind of transcript of the natural sound language, which is compiled by the authors and users themselves. That is, referring to the text field of the language in the form of electronic written speech gives an understanding of what language environment and literacy level there is now in society. For example, in Internet correspondence, we almost do not see participles and adverbs, the errors are mostly the same. In order to find examples of errors in media texts and fiction (examples 10-14), we had to work hard, and in order to see errors in network communication, we needed to analyze only one channel on Yandex. Zen.

In the article, we showed that official media and fiction also contain violations of spelling norms. However, folk linguists selectively approach criticism of texts with errors, obviously due to the interactivity of the communication environment and the ability to promptly punish the illiterate. The bigger problem is that there is no functioning mechanism in Internet communication that could control the literacy rate of writing articles. A possible solution is professional error monitoring in network communication with the development of content filters that analyze the threshold for the presence of the most frequent errors, and on the part of users, access to text verification services. The risks that arise in the text field of the Internet space are certainly considerable. But linguistic intolerance does not play a special role in correcting the situation either.

 List of illustrative material

(1-9) Actor's notes. Cover from the screen. Channel on Yandex.Zen. URL: https://zen.yandex.ru/zapiski_aktera (accessed 12/17/2023).

(10) Astronomers have solved the mystery of the "red fan" in the sky over Japan. AIF – Moscow. 04/06/2020. – URL: https://aif.ru/society/science/astronomy_razgadali_zagadku_krasnogo_veera_v_nebe_nad_yaponiey (accessed 12/17/2023).

(11) The former Pentagon adviser said that the United States understands the proximity of Ukraine's defeat. AIF - Moscow. 01/25/2023. – URL: https://aif.ru/politics/world/eks-sovetnik_pentagona_zayavil_chto_ssha_ponimayut_blizost_porazheniya_ukrainy (accessed 12/17/2023).

(12) "Tomato patriotism" is gaining momentum in Israel. AIF – Moscow. 10/30/2023. – URL: https://aif.ru/money/market/v_izraile_nabiraet_oboroty_pomidornyy_patriotizm (accessed 12/17/2023).

(13) You asked to sort out the refereeing of the 2022 World Cup final. There are three penalties, a simulation of a Thuram and a controversial Messi goal / Sports.ru . 12/20/12. URL: https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/mama4h/3102978.html (accessed 12/17/2023).

(14) There are up to a thousand Russian tourists in Turkish resorts / RIA Novosti, 07/15/2016. The National corpus of the Russian language. 2003—2023. Available at: ruscorpora.ru

(15) Lunar Chronicles. Snow White; translated from English. M. : AST Publishing House, 2016. https://books.google.ru / (accessed 12/17/2023).