Analysis of the Linguistic Aspect of the Speech Portrait of a Modern English-speaking Blogger

Khabibullina Oksana Anatol'evna PhD in Philology Associate professor, Department of Germanic Languages Sterlitamak Branch of Bashkir State University 453124, Russia, Republic of Bashkortostan, Sterlitamak, Bogdan Khmelnitsky str., 46, sq. 57 o.a.khabibullina@strbsu.ru

The speech characteristic of a public linguistic personality and personality in general is one of the main components of the "portrait" of a personality in the formation of a holistic image, an idea of it. By studying the "speech portraits" of various literary characters, public figures, it is possible to develop the basic principles of analyzing the speech portraits of people around us, representatives of science, culture, politics, show business. In the process of studying the characteristic phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, as well as linguopragmatic features of a person's speech behavior, the speech characteristics of a representative of a certain social or age group, the one to which the personality belongs, are determined.

The relevance of this study is determined by the need to study the speech behavior of a public linguistic personality. The novelty lies in the fact that it allows you to see the features of a person's speech, his hidden and explicit motives, communicative goals, features of the realization of his communicative needs.

Social communication on the Internet in modern reality has reached a historical maximum. This is due to the development of social platforms and video hosting. There are different approaches to the concept of Internet communication. Researcher S.V. Borisnev defines communication as a socially conditioned process of transmitting and perceiving information, both in interpersonal and mass communication through various channels using various verbal and nonverbal communicative means. Communication technologies change over time and old ways like radio, fax or telephone are replaced by various new technologies – social networks, messengers via the Internet, this is Internet communication ^{[1, pp. 57-59]}.

Another author, E.N. Galichikina, points out that Internet communication is primarily a method of communication in which information is transmitted via Internet channels using standard protocols for exchanging and presenting information. There are various ways of transmitting information – audio–video messages, transmission of electronic documents, files ^{[2, pp.43-47]}.

Online communication is divided into two groups:

1. real-time communication;

2. communication with the ability to delay the response.

The global web today is a storehouse of information and knowledge, the most extensive source with which no library can compete. Its advantage is the speed of information retrieval, instant communication with the participant of communication at any distance.

A blog is often regarded as a specific genre of Internet communication, which is often identified either with diary entries or with media genres. It is worth noting the fact that we cannot deny that the specifics of the virtual sphere of communication determines the peculiarities of the genres that exist in it. The blog acquires new features that are not inherent in either the diary or the media genres. A diary is a form of narration that is conducted in the first person; information recorded by real people about the current events of their lives ^{[3, p.752]}.

Despite the fact that it is difficult to generalize the content of blogs, V.Yu. Kozhanova presented a classification, the criterion of which is the topic of online diaries.

In this typology , the following are distinguished:

1. informational blogs (often the author of such a blog touches on acute social problems);

2. political blogs (dedicated to discussing the political life of society and usually conducted by a politician or journalist);

3. blogs – travel essays (the authors of such blogs write mainly or only about their travels);

4. entertainment blogs.

This classification covers only blogs located on the LiveJournal platform, while blogs dedicated to the personal life of the author, PR blogs are not mentioned, therefore this classification cannot be considered complete. Moreover, blogs, being mobile and interactive, "often change genres, adapting to the specifics of the author's perception of an event, the reception of blogs by readers and other factors" ^{[4, p.163]}. There is a classification of blogs related to the personality of the author. Researchers distinguish three types: a personal blog (run by one person, usually the owner of the blog, less often by an employee), a social/collective blog (such a blog is run by a group of authors) and a ghost blog. In a ghost blog, an unidentified author keeps a journal on behalf of someone else and hides under the mask of an invented individual or a famous person ^{[5, p.28]}. It seems more appropriate to divide blogs into personal and collective according to the number of authors of the texts of one blog and separately consider the question of whether the blogger writes on his own behalf or hides his identity.

"Online diaries tend to be dominated by the strategy of self-expression. Creating a virtual personality is an example of self—invention" ^[6]. This term — self—invention - has not yet been supported by the general scientific community, therefore, when talking about the self-representation of the subject in the Internet space, we will use the more traditional term "self-presentation". Some researchers note that online diaries are extremely rarely used to create so-called fictitious characters. The material we study — blogs — allows us to speak about a certain degree of objectivity of the formed image of the author of the diary. In modern Internet communication, potential anonymity as a key characteristic inherent in the author and addressee on the Internet is being rethought: modern technologies allow identifying, tracking the participant of communication and bringing to justice for illegal acts, if any. At the same time, the code emancipation is inconsistently corrected: the laws regulating the Internet space did not have a significant impact on the signs of Internet writing, thus, the potential anonymity of communicants "is determined by the lack of an attitude to mandatory acquaintance with the interlocutor, and the specifics of speech behavior becomes the most important means of authorization (self-identification) of the communicant in the Internet space" ^{[7, pp.115-116]}, which gives us the opportunity to turn to the theory of virtual personality. The picture of life created in the blog passes the reader's truthfulness test, while lying about any facts has a high chance of being disclosed, since most online diaries contain information that allows you to "expose" the author: place of work or study, photos, as well as indications of the diaries of people with whom the blogger is personally familiar and which act as a guarantor of the veracity of the blog content.

Each blogger has his or her own target audience for which he or she works: they are all united by common behavioral traits characteristic of this group of people, lifestyle, hobbies and values. This is one of the good reasons why bloggers are actively used for advertising, and why such advertising works effectively.

Many researchers are of the opinion that blogging is a new type of media, which is characterized by interactive interaction with the audience.  There are some factors that affect the effectiveness of such communication, that is, the achievement of the goals set by the blogger and the degree of impact on subscribers. Currently, many scientists agree that one of the effective techniques used by the mass media to influence the audience is the use of means of speech expressiveness that can affect the feelings of the recipient, cause certain emotions in him.

For example, E.V. Karpova, speaking about the basic principles of media text organization in online media, focuses on the alternation of its standard and expressive segments, the latter of which express the speaker's attitude to the content of the utterance and its assessment. These emotionally marked elements can be realized thanks to the tropes and figures of speech, with the help of which the author places logical accents in the text and experiments with language ^{[8, p. 128]}. L.A. Gorshkova, studying the communicative features of YouTube video hosting, also talks about the manipulative component of new media. The researcher insists that the main goal of video blogging is to transform the viewer's picture of the world in the way the blogger needs. The author of the YouTube channel, trying to increase the number of subscribers, attract more viewers to watch the new video, tries to interest the audience in various ways, one of which is the use of stylistic techniques ^{[9, p. 96]}.

 We agree with the opinion of these researchers and adhere to the point of view that with the help of means of speech expressiveness, the speaker, emotionally influencing the addressee, can stimulate his imagination.

Referring to text blogs, you can also trace certain features. The texts of the posts are usually divided into several parts. The authors use subheadings to facilitate the perception of information by readers. Graphons are also used to attract the reader's attention: highlighting subheadings in bold or italics, visual images. In professional blogs, unlike other types of blogs, the authors indicate their real names and practically do not use nicknames, thus emphasizing their professional competence, as well as the desire to be responsible for their recommendations and advice.

Stylistic features of blogs include the use of journalistic and conversational functional styles, as well as expressive means and techniques. Blog authors invite their audience to a dialogue by asking questions in the text itself or after it, and also often ask readers to express their attitude to what they read or share their experience on any issue. The syntactic features of a popular English-language blog are: the predominance of short sentences, direct speech and small paragraphs. 

The language of blogs is of interest to specialists and represents a certain field for further linguistic research. The blog is syncretic by nature and combines the features of oral and written communication, which is the reason for the uniqueness and diversity of its text language. The latter is most susceptible to changes under the influence of external factors. This can also be explained by the lack of requirements for the design and content of texts in the blog. In this article we will analyze the lexical and stylistic components of the bloggers' language.

A detailed analysis of the speech portrait is based on specific language levels: phonetic, lexical, stylistic. This analysis of features is a characteristic of different levels of realization of the linguistic personality. The establishment of bright elements is one of their most important components in the characterization of a speech portrait, therefore, the description of all these levels is fundamental in the analysis of the speaker's linguistic characteristics and his speech behavior. Researchers distinguish three aspects of an individual speech portrait: linguistic, social and behavioral. It is the linguistic aspect that is the subject of our research.

What are the lexical and stylistic features of bloggers' speech? We will try to answer this question based on the analysis of the speech of the popular English-language video blogger PewDiePie. Before starting to study the peculiarities of speech, we turned directly to the personality of the blogger himself and studied his biography. His real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Cheldberg. He was born on October 24, 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden. His mother was an IT director at the KappAhl organization, and his father was an executive director of another company. After graduating from high school, he entered Chalmers Technical University in 2008, but dropped out three years later, because, according to him, he was not interested in it. Felix created his YouTube channel with the name PewDiePie on April 29, 2010. At first, the development of his channel was not fast. According to the memoirs of Chelberg himself, in his first videos he was shy even to speak, but got used to a new hobby thanks to the support of the audience. The channel began gaining popularity in 2012. So, on July 10, it had 1 million subscribers, and by September their number had doubled. Chelberg's YouTube channel mainly consists of walkthroughs of various video games, which were accompanied at first by his voiceover, and since March 2011, most of PewDiePie's videos contain recordings from his video camera. We see that Felix was born in a family where both parents were somehow connected with the world of modern technology, which may have determined the future scope of his activities.

We have viewed about 50 video clips, then highlighted and analyzed the following features of speech: expressiveness, simplicity of presentation, conversational style, variety of vocabulary. The video blogger shows a high level of emotional use of language with the use of interjections. So, in the vocabulary of PewDiePie, profanity is often found, which he censors. Also, the video blogger actively uses youth slang: in his vocabulary you can find words such as vibe (mood), dude (buddy), soy boy, etc. For quite a long time of blogging, PewDiePie has acquired his own "crown" words and phrases, thanks to which his personality becomes more recognizable. For example, often in his videos, Chelberg uses the word "epic", which has already become associated with his image. In speech, you can notice multiple Americanisms, for example: gonna ("going to" is simplified to "gonna" in the meaning of "What are you going to do"), wanna ("want to" to "wanna", in the meaning of "What do you want (or will)), kinda (from "kind of" meaning "something like"), nah/yeah, cause/cuz (from "because" meaning "because").  Despite the fact that the blogger communicates with the audience in a fairly simple language, without the use of complex grammatical constructions and specialized vocabulary, his vocabulary cannot be called poor. He often uses a variety of synonyms, such as talk, communicate, interact, ramble. All of them have a similar denotative meaning of "talking", however, their connotative meanings differ from each other. The first three words in this synonymic series have a neutral meaning, while the last one has a more negative connotation. Let's turn to the Cambridge Dictionary. Consider this definition: to talk or write in a confused way, often for a long time. Here we see that this word can be considered in the meaning of "talking for a long time or writing at a staggering pace" ^[10]. The following frequently used synonyms are associated with mental activity and have a common denotative meaning of "think": assume, think, assume. All of them have a neutral meaning without emotional coloring.  During the analysis, we also identified synonyms that have a common meaning of "strange": weird, bizarre, strange. All words, with the exception of "weird" have no emotional coloring and can be used without subtext. The word "weird" has a meaning: strange and unusual, sometimes in a way that upsets you ^[11]. It is implied here that this word can be used with a negative connotation, meaning,  that this event, thing or person can upset us. In addition to the above phenomena, Cheldberg does not neglect stable expressions and phraseological units, which can also be noticed in his speech. Most of them are informal and are used mainly in the American version of English. Here are examples of the most commonly used expressions and indicate the number of their use:

1.     «To get real ?used for telling someone that they should try to understand the true facts of a situation and not hope for what is impossible» ^[12].  It has been used 16 times;

2. "To let out – when something that people go to, such as school or a show, lets out, it ends and everyone leaves" ^[13] – 11 times;

3. "To fill the void – to provide or replace something that's needed" ^[14] – 7 times;

4.     «To freak out –(inf.) to become or cause someone to become extremely emotional" ^[15] – 4 times.

 The stylistic component of the video blogger's speech, which is an important part of the speech portrait, was also considered and analyzed by us. Blogger PewDiePie often resorts to such a stylistic technique as repetition, which aims to highlight the most significant words in the flow of speech, as well as to make speech more expressive. For example, “I don't know. I don’t know!” or “She's clear, she's clear” in the video “Am I Introverted or Extroverted?!Sometimes in his speech you can hear some examples of gradation (“I am single, lonely, pathetic”). Its use is conditioned by the need to arouse the interest of the audience and, of course, to penetrate in detail into the meaning of the statement, generating figurative associations. Such a technique as a rhetorical question gives speech a special emotionality, increases tension, makes the audience think. Thanks to rhetorical questions, the speaker seems to interact with the listeners, therefore, communication is much more successful. For this reason, video bloggers often use this kind of questions in their speech. PewDiePie is no exception, who very often asks rhetorical questions (for example, “Excuse me, what? What happened? Why do I know this?”; “Am I right, gamers?") in the video "A YoYo Master Teaches Me How To YoYo", makes subscribers and guests of the channel want to answer his questions, help him and, as a result, watch the video in full and stay on the channel. In addition, repeatedly in the speech of the video blogger, you can hear sentences containing irony. They are often used to create a humorous effect. In the above video, “Am I Introverted or Extroverted?!”PewDiePie says, “Everyone knows introverts can't talk, they cannot communicate,” which is certainly an ironic statement in this context. In addition to irony, you can find such a trick as a play on words: "...quick word of a sponsor. Nordvpn is the greatest vpn of all time not just because it has nord in the name and i'm a nord as well but because it is the greatest vpn…». The use of this technique is conditioned by the desire to create a humorous effect and attract attention to advertising.

As for syntactic stylistic means, here we can distinguish: repetitions, aposiopesis (default).

The repetitions that the blogger uses in his speech are a reflection of his emotional state (most often excited and joyful): "He's not here, he's not here, he's not here!...", "...keep shooting, keep going..", "come on ball, come on, come on".

PewDiePie mostly uses aposiopesis or silence in the titles to his videos to create a certain effect of intrigue in the viewer: "I can't believe this is real...", "First time driving in Japan ...", "Hitman VR is Hilariously Bad...".

Summing up the above, we can say that in his videos PewDiePie uses simple spoken English. The blogger's speech is replete with stylistically marked, emotionally-colored vocabulary, slangisms and various stylistic techniques are actively used. Due to the fact that the target audience of this video blog is mostly teenagers and young people, the author adheres to the appropriate type of communication.

As a second language personality, we chose the famous travel blogger Nora Dunn to compose a speech portrait. We have analyzed the text posted on the website www.theprofessionalhobo.com , which is an online blog dedicated to travel as a way of life. The author of the blog, Nora Dunn, a resident of Canada, in 2006 decided to radically change her lifestyle, she sold her property and became the so-called hobo (from the English "tramp"). During this period, Nora has already visited 50 countries. Her free lifestyle allows her to work in exchange for a place of residence. Considering that she really has something to tell readers about her new life and having accumulated enough useful experience, Nora Dunn shares it with the readers of the blog: she posts notes both in chronological order, presenting information about where she is, what she is doing, as well as describing her impressions and thoughts, and unites notes in blocks by subject: accommodation, transport, food, travel in Europe, tips, etc. or by time: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, etc. The site presents a considerable amount of informative content not only in the form of text, but also in video and photo format. The analysis of the blogger's speech manner allows us to conclude that the language and speech tools used by the author of the blog are designed to maintain in the eyes of the reading audience the image of a person close to every reader, straightforward and competent in the problems discussed.

After analyzing the written speech of blogger Nora, the following features were highlighted: coherent presentation of thoughts, consistent and interesting speech, simplicity of presentation, a wide variety of vocabulary. Nora quite competently and intelligibly tells about her life, using all sorts of vocabulary to maintain the reader's attention. For example, the widespread use of phrasal verbs and stable expressions helps to immerse yourself in the modern speech of a blogger, making reading more comfortable and lively. Using different idioms can help with this: "in one go" in the following sentence: "I had never intended to get so much consistent use out of my apartment; it was meant as a base for lots of travel, and has instead now been the longest place I've stayed in one go in the last 15 years!"; "cut short": "But, we were only able to get as far as Paris, Barcelona, Rome, and Lisbon before our plans were cut short due to the pandemic." The following phrases and phrasal verbs also seemed interesting in her speech:

1. «take pride in smth (idiom) – to feel very pleased about something or someone you are closely connected with» ^[16];

2. «spark up (idiom) – to begin or initiate something, especially a conversation, argument» ^[17];

3. «whisper something around – to spread secrets or gossip around» ^[18];

4. «in and out (of something) (idiom) –going regularly to a place» ^[19];

5. «sweep through (idiom) – «to move, rush, or pass quickly through something or some place» ^[20];

6. «keep going – «to continue in the same way as before» ^[21].

Analyzing the units of the cognitive level in the texts of this blog, we can conclude that the use of a large number of phraseological units reflects not only a high intellectual level, but also the hierarchy of values associated with the professional field of the blogger.

It was also noticed the use of a small amount of youth slang and borrowings. The expression "hit the fan" in the following context: "In early March, before COVID-19 hit the global fan, we flew to Europe for two travel conferences and two months of exploring." It has the following meaning according to Collins English Dictionary – "to become suddenly embarrassing, troublesome, etc.; have a strong negative effect".

As an example of borrowings, we analyzed the word "pierogi" - "(redirected from Pierogies) a semicircular dumping with any of various fillings, such as finely chopped meat or vegetables, that is often saut?ed after being boiled". The use of this word in the following sentence: «We weighed our fate, “Do we cross into Slovakia or go back to Poland where we have a few friends and can live off pierogies?"" shows Nora's interest in the life of other countries; she uses the word "dumpling", which is not similar in meaning in her native language, showing her speech expressively colored and emotional.

Using the informal (informal) vocabulary, in this case idioms, is also present in the blogger's speech, but in a minimal amount: for example, "willy-nilly - suddenly and without planning or order" in this sentence: "That said, we weren't willy-nilly about the places we explored".

The diversity of the blogger's speech shows the wide use of various synonyms, sometimes even in one sentence. Synonymous expressions "to have jealousy - to have a feeling of unhappiness and anger because someone has something or someone that you want" and "to envy - to wish that you had something that another person has" (definitions given according to the Cambridge Dictionary) are present in the same sentence in different emotionally-colored expression of thought: "Although I do have a bit of jealousy when I see others in Mexico, I don't envy those who got the virus."

The following example is the use of synonyms for the word "income":

1. income – «money that is earned from doing work or received from investments»;

2. revenue – «money that a company receives, especially from selling goods or services»

3. paycheck – «the amount of money a person earns».

Synonymous expressions with a similar denotative meaning are used by Nora in three different sentences following each other: "There was a massive drop in my Youtube income in March and through the spring. My Youtube revenue literally dropped by about 70%, due to not posting travel content because I wasn’t traveling, as well as advertisers pulling out because of the shaky economy. It stayed that way until I got back to traveling again in June, when fortunately, things got a lot better, and I had my biggest paychecks ever from Youtube». This technique indicates a large vocabulary of the blogger, the author replaces words that are close in meaning and, thereby, brings variety to speech, conveys the idea more accurately and clearly and avoids annoying repetitions.

The style dominants of the blog are the means of expressive syntax, a high level of knowledge in the field of professional vocabulary, a skillful combination of book and conversational storytelling styles.

 It can be noticed that comparisons are sometimes used with a certain amount of joking, which we can see by the example of the phrase: «It looks like a place that was designed with great intentions, but stopped halfway through construction». In order to shorten, compress speech, Nora uses a metonymy: "Because Hollywood makes you think it's harder." Some of the author's explanations about the speech peculiarities and cultural peculiarities of some peoples can tell us about professionalism, for example, in the story about a trip to the island of Newfoundland, Nora draws attention to the peculiarities of the local style of communication: ""Whaddya at?" Pronounced like it's one word, this is a Newfoundlander's way of saying “what are you up to". “How you goin’?” comes the question, which is responded to with a simple “the best kind”, which generally equates to “great” or “excellent”; a phrase that can also be used outside of this particular context to simply say “awesome”». Nora Dunn's blog can be considered as a kind of mass media that can not only present the image of the author, but also introduce readers to the range of topics related to travel, tourism. Nora uses a lot of rhetorical questions to communicate with readers, as, for example, in the story about a trip to Russia: «Is it possible these are self-sustaining communities out here? Is there a line that delineates Siberia – this vast harsh land for outcasts? Is Siberia geographical or psychological? ». To create contrast and emotional coloring of speech, Nora uses such a technique as the antithesis: "Professionally, I loved what I did. But personally, it was not working».

From the syntactic stylistic techniques used by Nora, it is possible to distinguish: various types of repetitions (anaphora, epiphora, anadyplosis, etc.), elliptical turns, isolation.

The anaphora can be seen in the following sentences: "I try not to say the word 'mistakes' too often because I made a lot of them, but I learned a lot of lessons. I try very hard», «We thought, “Well, what’s next? Is he going to get the Real Job?” He was looking at places in Silicon Valley. We thought, “Why don’t we–” We love to travel. We didn’t know where we wanted to settle in the U.S. We thought, “Well, why don’t we just sell everything and live in an RV and just travel around the U.S.?” So we did», «I need a team. I need employees. I need people who are working in my team and just on my team».

Examples of the use of epiphora are the following sentences: «Of course, I then– I know it was, it was bizarre and thinking back to that time– and I did six months there. He was doing a lot of time there», «Really 2011, in my opinion, was really when the move to online e-commerce and entrepreneurship and businesses was really getting going. That’s when the demand for coders was really getting rolling», «Empowering more women. Impacting more women».

In the sentence "It didn't really matter where I was working. I was just working all the time" you can see the anadyplosis. Repetitions of individual words were also noticed: "I deployed again. He deployed multiple times», «My career projection was just going up and up», «I was really, really discouraged». 

The author uses repetitions primarily to put special emphasis on repetitive words or phrases, or unconsciously in order to collect his thoughts.

The separation is shown in this sentence: «We sold everything. Vehicles. Furniture. Everything. Moved into an RV». It also serves to create a special atmosphere and highlight important details for the author.

Elliptical turns were found: "Nothing like that. Again google". Such turns are characteristic of oral speech and colloquial style in general and in general, omitting some parts of a sentence is the norm of dialogic speech.

We noticed and analyzed a multi-union, uncharacteristic for oral speech: "Even though I caught myself and I was super passionate about it and I loved it and I was pretty good at it." Its use emphasizes the role of each union, and makes speech more expressive.

As for graphic means of expression, the author uses graphon to enhance emotions and accentuate the right words and phrases: "With an emphasis on work and travel, they provide a simple answer to the question plaguing travelers worldwide: How do I afford travel?», «One of the things that occasionally happens for entrepreneurs when they evolve from working in their business to working on their business, is they find that they’re no longer doing the tasks that they trained themselves to do, and that were really the impetus for starting the business to begin with».

It is also important that in her speech there is a fairly small percentage of slang inherent in the conversational style and a complete absence of profanity. All this allows us to conclude that this blog can be perfectly suitable for learning English, including schoolchildren. The blogger's communicative goal is to convey information about the cultural characteristics of the countries she visited, general recommendations for travel lovers.

To compile the third speech portrait, we selected a blog dedicated to book topics. We have studied and analyzed the information posted on the website https://forreadingaddicts.co.uk / . This blog has several authors who decided to team up and publish news of the book world, reviews and reviews.  The idea of creating a blog belongs to the girl Kath (Kath). She says about herself that she has always loved to read, and books have been with her both in good and bad times. Her great desire was to share this love with others. The girl pretty much manages all the blogging processes. Later, other like-minded people joined her. Everyone talks about themselves, about their history of involvement in the blog, their contribution to it and, of course, their favorite genres of works.  Also on the page you can immediately purchase the book you like, since the blog has this function. On the main page you can see the following sections: "About authors", "Book Reviews" (here you can also choose the genre you are interested in), "Reading Resources", "Shop", "Contacts" (this section includes links to other social networks to contact someone from the authors). The site is designed quite illustratively, with lots of photos and videos, as well as small quizzes on works and their authors.

Stylistic features of this blog include: the predominance of journalistic style, expressiveness, the use of various means of artistic expression.

As expected, the language of people who have devoted themselves to books, even in the Internet space, will differ significantly from the language of bloggers of other thematic areas. The authors use metaphors such as "heads buried in a book" in the sentence: "You'll find us loitering around social media when we don't have our heads buried in a book, so come and find us and join in the fun", "his spirit lives" in "We all hope his spirit lives on for many more generations through his joyful, heartfelt stories", " a singular voice and a shining light in children's  books" in "His was a singular voice and a shining light in children's books that highlighted inclusiveness, diversity and parts of our world that are not always present in publishing for children", "devastated by death" in "I am devastated by the sudden death of my best friend, David McKee".

A technique close to metaphor is also used – comparison.

·        «A new bookstore in China with sweeping staircases and illusionary mirrors looks like something created by Dutch artist M.C. Escher»

·        «Drink Like a Lannister with these Game of Thrones Whiskies»

·        «The mention of children caused Harold to remember his suicided son, David, which further caused him to remember Maureen’s mothering which he awed at, like a spectator from the shadows»

·        «Similarly, the woman is like a priest who symbolically is baptising him into the feminine»

·        «He sat with Maureen beside the sea where he relayed all his reflections, introspections and experiences of his walk, like a confession of himself to her that was accompanied by tears»

·        «The Namesake tells of a clash of cultures, and like Deva and his parents in Master of None, it gives insight into the experiences of Indian immigrants in an American suburb».

The use of metaphors and comparisons speaks primarily of a high level of language proficiency, as well as the author's desire to give imagery to his speech.

In order to reflect their emotions and express their attitude to what they have written, blog creators also use epithets. The website we are analyzing is no exception. Such epithets as "heartfelt", "charming", "genuinely thrilling", "unfathomable", "pioneering", "brilliant", "anguished", "spectacular", "groundbreaking" were found.

A fairly high level of reading ability and a large vocabulary of the authors can also be understood from their use of phrasal verbs and idioms. For example, in the article "Can books be considered "Decor"?", the idiom "to come under fire" was used ? "to be criticized" ^[22] in the sentence: "Ashely Tisdale, best known for her role in High School Musical, has come under fire for apparently using books as 'decor'". Also in this article you can find a phrasal verb  «to clear up (something)» in the meaning of "to remove doubts, confusion, or wrong ideas" ^[23]. We have also discovered several more interesting stable expressions and phrasal verbs:

·        «to take sb aback (phrasal verb) – to surprise or shock someone so much that they do not know how to behave for a short time» ^[24];

·        «to hand over something/someone (phrasal verb) – to give something to someone, esp. after being asked or told to do this» ^[25];

·        «to loiter around (idiom) ? to waste time being idle; to spend time doing little or nothing» ^[26];

·        «to cut ties (idiom) – to abruptly and permanently end a relationship with another person or thing» ^[27].

The author uses quite a few syntactic stylistic techniques. We found lexical repetitions: "With Graham Norton's charisma, and books, books, books, what's not to love?" (also here you can see a rhetorical question to create a "connection" with the reader) and isolation: "As this section grows (hopefully with your help) we'll be able to give you a recommended reading list for each genre and sub-genre". By using the repetition of the word "books", the author wants to focus on this word. Isolation also allows you to complement your thought.

In addition to the above conclusion, we can also add the absence of profanity (with the exception of quotations), and we have not identified words related to slang or jargon. The proposals have a clear structure, are not overloaded with excessive turnover. This blog can be used as an assistant in learning a foreign language, both for schoolchildren and older people.

As a result of the analysis of the speech portraits of bloggers, we noted certain lexical and stylistic features characteristic of each of the bloggers. These features are related to the audience that their blog is aimed at, depend on the level of general erudition, the field of activity and personal interests, as well as certain character traits and lifestyle.

During the analysis, the following lexical and stylistic features were identified: an abundance of synonyms, stable expressions and phrasal verbs, frequent use of various types of repetitions, graphons (especially in the titles to videos or articles), rhetorical questions. We also met the following stylistic techniques: epithets, metaphors, isolation, multi-union, aposiopesis. All this suggests that the language of modern bloggers is very rich and represents a wide field for further study.