The specifics of the pronoun "we" as an instrument of author's self-identification in new youth media (based on podcasts)

Karpov Ernest Sergeevich ORCID: 0000-0002-8908-2705 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Television Technologies, Kosygin Russian State University (Technologies. Design. Art) 115561, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Kashirskoe Shosse str., 132/1, sq. 46 calib_mr_stolz@rambler.ru Other publications by this author     Murzina Ol'ga Viktorovna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Television Technologies, Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Education "Kosygin Russian State University" (Technologies. Design. Art) 119071, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Malaya Kaluzhskaya, 1 210978@list.ru Gegelova Natal'ya Sergeevna Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Theory and Practice of Journalism, Modern Media Communications, Griboyedov Moscow University 111024, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Shosse Entuziastov, 21 mikhail0001@mail.ru

Balashova Kristina Aleksandrovna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Theory and Practice of Journalism, Modern Media Communications, Griboyedov Moscow University 111024, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Shosse Entuziastov, 21 aizenshtatka@gmail.com

In the 2020s, the podcast genre became widespread in Russia - audio recordings (usually a series of audio recordings), which is a story about something, a confidential conversation, a journalistic investigation, etc. Podcasts, as a rule, are produced in series, the series are combined into seasons, and most of these audio series have some kind of unifying theme. Podcasts about history, achievements of natural sciences, psychology, cooking, etc. are widely represented on the market. Until 2020, podcasts did not play such a significant role in the media market, and the reason for their spread is the pandemic and isolation: "podcasts are ideal companions for a pandemic, because it is a very personal content format, almost a conversation on souls. They resemble a conversation in which you can discuss books, mental health, relationships and much more."^[5] According to podcasting researchers ^{[2, 8, 9]}, the prospects of the genre are evaluated very highly: it is predicted that the audience of podcasts in Russia will double by 2024.

According to statistics collected and systematized by D. Maslenko, podcast as a genre of modern media is popular mainly with a young audience: "The most listening audience, according to Podcasts.ru and Yandex.Music, these are people aged 24 to 34 years. According to various estimates, their share in the total number of users ranges from 29% to 42%. The second place is divided into two age categories at once. At the service Podcasts.ru 18% of users are people from 35 to 44 years old, while on Yandex.Music almost the same percentage (17%) are listeners aged 18 to 24. Data from the Statista service also confirms the popularity of podcasts mainly among young audiences: the highest interest in this type of content people aged from 25 to 34 showed it. Moreover, 13% of this number noticed that they listened to podcasts five to seven years ago. While people of the older generation (from 45 to 59) clarified that they did not know about such media content at all" ^[7]. Accordingly, the texts of podcasts, the values they broadcast and their linguistic content have an impact on a young audience and need to be studied.

A podcast as a genre implies a monologue, dialogue or polylogue, which implies interaction with listeners – unlike the interactive format of a live broadcast, a podcast can interact with listeners through comments and chats. A distinct characteristic of this genre, according to our observations, is a specific semantic shift in the use of the pronoun "we", to which this study will be devoted.

The pronoun "we" in Russian includes two non–coincident, and in some cases mutually exclusive meanings - "we are inclusive" and "we are exclusive". The first case involves the inclusion – inclusion – of the listener in a certain set, which also includes the speaker: "we are with you." The second case implies the exclusion of the listener from a certain set, which includes the speaker and some other people (but not the listener): "we are with them." So, if a teacher, addressing students, says: "next time we will meet in a week," he uses "we are inclusive," and if he uses the construction "we have developed exam questions," then he means "we are exclusive," that is, "we" implies, for example, a team teachers of the department, not including students.

In a number of languages, "we are inclusive" and "we are exclusive" are represented by different pronouns. So, M.A. Daniel points out: "if we take, for example, the Russian pronoun we, it turns out that in languages where an inclusive and exclusive pronoun are opposed, two different pronominal forms correspond to it – such a 'we' that includes the addressee ('we' is inclusive) and such a 'we', which excludes the addressee (‘we’ is exclusive) ^{[3, p. 239]}. S.A. Maksimov notes that among the languages of Europe, this opposition is explicitly represented only in Udmurt ^[6]. Within the category of inclusivity, nuclear and extended inclusivity are also distinguished – nuclear implies only the speaker and the listener, extended – the totality of "speaker + listener + some other people".

Native speakers of the Russian language in most cases intuitively distinguish the contexts of the use of inclusive and exclusive pronouns "we", while, as M.A. Daniel notes, we are not even talking about two, but about three types of pronouns – in addition to the opposition of inclusive (in two versions) and exclusive format, there is also a neutral "we", in in which the corresponding opposition is neutralized. Accordingly, a native speaker orients himself in these pronouns, relying on intuition and the context of uttering the phrase: for example, without context in a phrase such as "we are going to the cinema", both nuclear ("we are going to the cinema with you") and extended ("we are going with you and grandpa in the cinema") inclusive, and exclusive ("my friends and I go to the cinema, and you stay at home"). These meanings apply both to the pronoun "we" itself in the totality of its cases ("us", "us", "us") and to its derivatives

In modern podcasts, there is a tendency to expand extended inclusivity: when addressing the audience, the author of the text uses the pronoun "we" in the meaning "I + audience + other people". The analysis of a continuous sample of texts spoken by the hosts and guests of podcasts showed that in most cases the presenter uses the pronoun "we", using phrases such as "we are starting", "we are diving", "we are going into the world ...", etc. Constructions of this type imply joint immersion in a certain sphere of two / three subjects – the presenter, the guest (if present), and the listener (listeners). We emphasize that in a specific context, the opposition between inclusive and exclusive "we" is practically not neutralized: for example, in the phrase "we will consider" taken out of context, one can see both exclusive and inclusive "we", but in the future it becomes clear to the listener which option is being discussed.

For example, when the authors of the podcast "Bazarov cut his finger" ^[12], dedicated to the psychological analysis of literary works and the expansion of this information on the current situation, use the phrase "dear listeners and listeners, we ask you to give us some time", the use of "we" is meant-exclusive. At the same time, analyzing literary works of classical Russian literature, the authors of the podcast use phrases such as "we have all now recognized Nikolenka in ourselves", "mom constantly lives in the thoughts of our hero", "our hero speaks", "this is how mom appears to us in childhood", etc.

The same trend can be traced in a completely different meaning and intention of the podcast "The Essence of Food" ^[14]: "join our wonderful company" ("we" is exclusive at the beginning, when the author of the podcast encourages listeners to join him): contexts such as "history on our plates", "our stories at the table", etc. In another culinary podcast "Delicious Investigation", included in the "Top 100" according to Yandex.Music, the presenter uses the phrase "and we are already at the chocolate factory" ^[13] and further in an easy and accessible form (the podcast is produced by Children's Radio and is designed primarily for children's and teenage audience) talks about the production of chocolate.

The podcast "The price of work stress and how to reduce it" ^[15] uses phrases such as "How can the work environment affect our well-being?", "We all know what stress is", "Today we will talk about bad stress", etc. In other words, in most cases there is an extended inclusion: a single listener, perceiving a podcast, understands that "we" includes not only himself, but also other potential listeners.

In general, the analysis of a solid sample of podcasts on the Yandex.Music platform showed that phrases with the pronoun "we" and its derivatives are widely used by the extended inclusive: the presenter implicitly assumes that a large audience is listening to him, and by addressing "we" to his listener, forms a virtual context of the collective, which is where-or follows him, listens to him, etc. – that is, sets the coordinates of the communicative situation of a lecture or excursion. For the beginning of each podcast release, it is characteristic to use "we" - an exclusive one that the author uses, inviting listeners to join him and his guests ("support us") or to him and to another set of listeners – those who already listen to this podcast and are a loyal audience ("we have already discussed"). This initial "we" segments the audience, suggesting an implicit call to join, join, become part of the totality to which "we are inclusive" refers in the future.

The meaning of using extended inclusion in podcasts seems to be due to several factors. Firstly, a podcast, unlike videos and TV shows, is not supported by a visual series. This is both a virtue and a disadvantage of the genre: on the one hand, you can listen to a podcast while doing other things in parallel and not being distracted by the visual series. On the other hand, in the absence of visual support, the entire semantic load of the podcast is determined by the imagination of the listener and is supported by the words of the presenter, as well as in a number of podcasts – recordings of sounds that are designed to illustrate what is being described. For example, cooking podcasts often use the sounds of a mixer running, the hiss of something frying in a frying pan, etc. Accordingly, the use of "we" emphasizes this involvement of the audience in a certain process described by the podcast host.

Genre and meaning of the podcast is close to the format of the radio program [Vitvinchuk, Zhuravleva], which raises the question of the need to compare the use of "we" in podcasts with the use of "we" in the radio format. The question of the inclusive and exclusive pronoun "we" in children's radio programs was investigated by A.V. Podvyazkina: "this pronoun can be used both in its inclusive (for the purpose of uniting with the audience) and in its exclusive (for the purpose of self-presentation) meaning. As a rule, the inclusivity or exclusivity of the pronoun WE is due to the nature of the radio broadcast, and therefore the situation of communication" ^{[11, p. 274]}. The prevalence of exclusivity or inclusivity in this study was not noted. There are no other studies of the pronoun "we" in radio broadcasts, which allows us to identify further research prospects. At the same time, the key difference of the podcast is in the absence of situativeness, that is, it is not listened to live, but in the format that is convenient for the listener. The "we" of a radio host is situational – it implies the inclusion of those listeners who are currently perceiving the broadcast and can, for example, call a radio station or write something in the comments on social networks. The "we" of the podcaster assumes a broader context: when addressing his virtual audience, he implies that some listen to his recording not "in a moment", but in a few months or years. This leads to a wide representation of "timeless" content in podcasts: educational information, analysis of classical works, etc.

In general, it can be confidently stated that the widespread distribution of podcasts has introduced a new facet to the semantics of the pronoun "we" in the Russian language. In comparison with the "semantic portrait" of this pronoun, made in 2018 by E.V. Paducheva ^[10], new shades of meaning were added to it, and most importantly, there was a redistribution in the use of "we" in its various functions. The development of the podcast genre and the projected further growth have become the basis for the expansion of the use of "we" in the meaning of extended inclusion.

The pronoun "we" is a self-presentation of the host / author of the podcast and, in addition to the linguistic aspect of the expansion of extended inclusion, there is a change in the pattern within the standard model of communication in the media. The presenter appears as the leader of a certain implicitly implied team that feels / tries / travels with him, etc. Together with the educational topics common in domestic podcasts, this brings the presenter closer to the role of a lecturer speaking to a student audience, which indirectly contributes to the popularity of podcasts among young people.