Emotivity Category as a Way to Popularize Scientific Knowledge in Edutainment

Chzhu Yunping Postgraduate student, Department of Russian as a Foreign Language, Saint Petersburg State University 199155, Russia, Leningrad region, Saint Petersburg, Korablestroiteley str., 20, sq. 302 2763496449@qq.com Other publications by this author

The main goals of popular science communication are "addressing a wide audience and popularizing scientific knowledge in society" ^{[1, p. 7]}. In this regard, the process of teaching scientific knowledge to a wide audience should be interesting and can be perfectly carried out due to the penetration of computer technologies into the field of education and science in an entertaining format. As a result, for our research, the symbiosis of communication and entertainment was evaluated and the concept of edutainment was introduced – this is "a concept denoting new forms of entertainment, encouraging the desire for complexity, encouraging the user to probe artificial worlds" ^{[2, p. 83]}. As an example of edutainment, we choose a popular science animation video, where language tools and speech techniques are used to ensure the accessibility and effectiveness of mastering scientific information for an audience consisting of non-specialists, as well as visual means (especially illustration and syncretism of various visual components).

The role of knowledge in the life of modern society is gradually increasing, which leads to the search for ways to form a stable interest of the general public in the development of scientific information and stimulates the intensive development of the foundations of the scientific style, especially the popular scientific style, aimed at the mass non-special addressee. Adhering to the opinion of V. I. Shakhovsky, we consider the category of emotivity as a reflection of emotions in the linguistic sphere, we believe that verbally emotions "can be named (nomination), described (description), expressed (expression)" ^{[3, p. 45]}. The category of emotivity is actualized through linguistic means – lexical units, divided into emotive-affective, emotive-connotatives and emotive-potentiatives ^{[4, p. 14-19]}, syntactic units – emotive utterances ^{[5, p. 126]}, and paralinguistic units: gestures, facial expressions, color, background sound, etc.; they accompany description of situations that cause emotions in the addressee and thus have an emotional impact on him.  

For analysis, we selected a popular science video "Russian in 18 minutes", which is part of the educational project "Educational program No. 3. The Russian language from "goy esi" to "lol kek""from the Arzamas website, which tells about the history of culture in a popular manner in videos, texts and photographs. The analyzed video contains a video sequence in the form of alternating illustrations, inscriptions, emoticons and emojis, and an audio sequence representing a voiceover and soundtrack. This video can be defined as a polycode (it contains both verbal and non-verbal components) and a multi-channel text (it transmits information simultaneously through visual and auditory channels) ^{[6, pp. 44-45]}.

Russian Russian in 18 minutes, a title characteristic of modern popular science videos, immediately gives the user - addressee of the information a general idea of the video he found, revealing his task – to tell the audience about the history of the Russian language in a short time in the format of a training video; the promise by the authors of an easy, effective mastering of the material should attract the public and cause her great interest in the course. Verification of students' mastering ("the main audience of Arzamas is students aged 18 to 44 years: they make up about 67 percent" ^[7]) of the material as a separate link in the learning process is reflected in the test proposed by the creators of the course, located at the bottom of the page; after completing the test, the user will receive an assessment that looks like written in red pen. Russian Russian in 18 Minutes from the Arzamas project can thus be considered educational material for a wide audience; in combination with the final test for the course "Russian from "goy esi" to "lol kek", it is a full-fledged interactive online distance course.

In the video "Russian in 18 minutes" selected for analysis, you can see a clear composition of the narrative: it consists of an introduction introducing the audience to the topic under discussion, and five parts in which the history of the Russian language from the XI to the XX century is told in a concise form in chronological order. The parts have the following names: 1 – "Old Russian language. Russian Russian", 2 – "Written language in Russia", 3 – "From Old Russian to Russian", 4 – "Russian language of the New Time", 5 – "Russian language in the XX century"; each of them begins with a name written in white letters on a black background, which visually structures the information and stimulates the audience to better memorize the material. Thus, the authors and scientific consultants of the video, educating their audience in the field of the history of the Russian language, demonstrate a very important ability for public lecturers to systematize scientific material, which increases the level of convenience of its use by the online audience.

For a deeper analysis, let's take the fourth part of the educational video – "The Russian language of the New Time", which lasts about five minutes. Russian Russian history of the XVIII – XIX centuries is presented in this part professionally, but in an accessible way, in which the authors distinguish the following periods: the reign of Peter I (the inclusion of a large number of borrowings in the Russian language), the years after Peter's death (the achievement of an ideal balance in the language as a result of the struggle of archaists with borrowings), the beginning of the XVIII century (the influence of French Russian Russian), the middle of the XIX century (attempts to streamline the Russian language, its lexical composition and grammatical structure). These periods are depicted on the timeline at the bottom of the video. Systematization of historical information in the form of a timeline helps the audience to comprehend and assimilate the history of the Russian language, presenting information in a visual, systematic way.

The analyzed video is defined by us as a polycode and polymodal text created by specialist authors, which combines educational and entertainment orientations; it is addressed to the general public, but mainly to modern youth. This allows us to characterize the selected video as a good example of edutainment, if we consider the latter as "a concept denoting new forms of entertainment that encourage the pursuit of complexity, encouraging the user to probe artificial worlds" ^{[2, p. 83]}.

Let's look at this material from a different angle. Russian Russian First, the fragment we have chosen (Part 4) is about the history of the Russian language in the time of Peter I, this segment lasts about a minute (timecode 10.45 – 11.52). Information about the reforms in the Russian language in the time of Peter I is presented in the form of a series of narrative sentences that inform about Peter's position in relation to his modern language (Peter I will create a new secular culture in Russia, and he does not need the ancient church language); about a series of actions he has taken in the field of language graphics (He will create a new civil font to print newspapers and scientific books, and get rid of unnecessary letters, although not all of them); about a new policy in the field of book translation (Peter orders to translate new books not into Slavic, but into Russian), about adapting the language to the realities of a new life (Peter builds a fleet and brings words from Dutch and English). A positive assessment of Peter I's reforms is conveyed through the word emotive-potentiative new, which in the context of the presentation is given positive connotations: (All this is a new life: drawing, dancing and fencing are the occupations of a young nobleman; Not only new things come from the West, but also a new way of thinking, and a new syntax is needed to express it). Thus, unlike the actual scientific texts, in the text of the popular science video, scientific information is presented by the authors mainly in sentences with emotional coloring.

In this fragment, the rhetorical question deserves special attention: "What if you want to write a love letter, but in the written language you have only the word "lust" for this?", which is aimed not at getting any definite answer from the addressee, but at convincing the addressee that the reforms the Russian language at the described moment of time was overdue and was necessary. The authors of the video give this example based on an ordinary life situation, prompting the addressee to imagine how it could be that someone wrote a letter to his beloved, while using the word "lust"; the viewer should take it with humor, since in modern language the word "lust" came from among the words used to express love. This creates an ironic emotive background of the statement. The humorous tone in transmitting serious information about the importance of the reform of the Russian language, which had matured by that time, disposes the addressee to the authors of the video, who use jokes and other means of modern technological laughing culture in the presentation of the material in their media product. The contrast between the seriousness of the information and the humorous tone of its presentation, embedded in the rhetorical question under consideration, encourages the addressee to better assimilate the scientific material.

The visual part, in which the authors of the video use animated emojis (pictures from Internet chats) in order to convey the emotions of the person depicted in the picture inserted into the video, who is sitting at a table and allegedly writes a love message, also adds to the attractiveness for the youth audience; against this background, emojis in the form of a heart appear and, a little later, remark "Lust?!" (a man sitting at a table in love with a girl, as if perplexed by the fact that he needs to use the word "lust" in his letter to this girl) (timecode 11:18). Emojis and emoticons (emoticons) as a means of expressing emotions are very common in modern Internet correspondence, they are especially popular among young people who are constantly immersed in the world of the Internet. Thus, using the capabilities of the program for the production of animated video series, the authors create a visual image of the chat, which is designed to find a response among modern youth.

In addition to Peter I, the authors in this fragment also pay attention to the role of M. Y. Lermontov, as a result of whose literary activity a great contribution was made to the development of the norms of the Russian literary language laid down by A. S. Pushkin. The verbal component of the fragment about Lermontov contains a bright, emotionally non-neutral (so far) word "mainstream": Lermontov in "The Hero of Our Time" makes this language mainstream (timecode 13:43). What is meant here is that thanks to Lermontov, the literary style, honed by Pushkin and then used by Lermontov himself, enters into a wide circulation and becomes the basis of the entire Russian literary language. A positive assessment of Lermontov's activity is expressed in the authors' use of Anglicism mainstream – it is a neologism ^[8] or even "nothing more than a label. This is still barbarism" ^[9]. The youth slang used in informal communication acts as an identifying marker here and acts as a method of attracting the interest of young people to the video in question, full of images from the Internet world familiar to them, thereby reducing the communicative distance between the creators and viewers of the video, for viewers of the video - representatives of youth, its perception is facilitated. The authors strive to express and at the same time inspire the audience with their own emotional and evaluative position; as a consequence, the audience's understanding and acceptance of scientific material is provided and facilitated by an emotional component. The attractiveness of the fragment about Lermontov for the youth audience is enhanced by the creativity of the visual part: when the announcer voices a fragment of the text about Lermontov, a portrait of Lermontov and the title page of his famous novel "Hero of Our Time" appear on the screen, after which, accompanied by an audio effect, we see a lot of emojis in the form of a hand with a thumb up, symbolizing respect and praise. Thus, if in the verbal component the authors' positive assessment of Lermontov's activity is expressed by using the word mainstream, then in the visual part it is expressed in a way familiar to young people to put a "like" (in this case, as if to Lermontov). The technique of implementing the edutainment technology here is the transcoding of information from the actual scientific register into the language of modern youth; the visual component accompanying the presentation makes the fragment in question even more attractive to its target audience.

Next, let's consider the fragment in which L. N. Tolstoy is mentioned, which is usually described in scientific texts very strictly and dryly because of the importance of the writer's figure for classical Russian literature and culture. But in our video, in the first sentence of the fragment about Tolstoy, the authors in order to attract the interest of young people, telling that Leo Tolstoy was proud of his French pronunciation, the colloquial expression golden youth is used: And Leo Tolstoy belonged to the golden youth, who distinguished their own by their impeccable French pronunciation; subsequently, the authors report, Leo Tolstoy changed his point of view in relation to the young passion for French: Then he will be very ashamed of it. In this fragment, scientific material is introduced into statements about the emotional state of a person; they are designed to interest the addressee with an unusual ironic tone that contributes to the creation of a special emotive background of the presentation. When the announcer utters the first sentence about Leo Tolstoy, sunglasses appear on his young portrait (hinting at the young Tolstoy's belonging to the "golden youth" of that time by using the visual image of the attribute of the "golden youth" of modernity). Golden Youth is "a contemptuous name for the idling, burning life of the young generation of elite strata of society" (highlighted by me. – Ch. Yu.) ^[10]. The image of Tolstoy in dark glasses contrasts with the strict image of Tolstoy as a gray-bearded old man, deeply embedded in the consciousness of a Russian-speaking person, which cannot but cause the viewer to smile; when the second sentence of this fragment sounds, emojis appear on the screen. Emojis used by the authors when creating the visual component of the video, which is no less important for him than the verbal component itself, contribute to the construction of a polycode and polymodal information complex. The ironic presentation of the material serves for the authors of the video as the main method of positioning the addressee.

Thus, the verbal component in the educational video under consideration usually appears in an entertaining form, which should arouse the viewer's interest in the information reported in it, even if this information itself is purely scientific in nature. As for the visual component of the video, it is often possible to see on the screen words not always voiced by the announcer, presented by the authors as symbols of different directions of public linguistic thought and periods in the development of the Russian language; these words are displayed on the screen by means of special, also symbolic animation effects, which gives the whole video a frivolous emotional coloring. Let's pay attention to some funny animation effects that display words on the screen. So, the words "candy", "broker", "boat", "student", etc., which are served as examples of borrowings that "gushed into the language", quickly move along the bottom of the screen from its left side to the right, gradually slowing down, as if they really are a wave, a water stream (this coincides with the text, Since Peter, a flood of borrowings has poured into the Russian language; timecode 11:27). Another example of this kind: the modern words "which", "although", "when" knock their outdated counterparts "hedgehog", "asche" and "when" off the screen, as if defeating them (at this time the announcer says: And the editors severely remove all "hedgehog" from the texts", "asche" and "egda"; timecode 11:06). Although such symbolic visual means by themselves do not contain an emotive component, in the context of the video they cause a special effect that ensures the interest of the youth audience and facilitates its perception of scientific knowledge.

ConclusionFrom a semiotic point of view, the material we have chosen is defined as a polycode text, where emotive visual components and verbal components interact, which ensures that the addressee understands on different channels with pleasure.

We emphasize that the visual animation accompanying the sounding text complements the material and clearly illustrates it. Animation effects entertain the user, but at the same time attract his attention to the material under discussion.

To evoke a positive emotional response, emotive techniques are used related to a person on the plot aspect, who made a great contribution to the development of the Russian language and emotive techniques are specially used by the author to ensure emotional perception.

Emotive techniques in the text we have chosen includes both verbal components as emotive-potentiative, rhetorical question, and nonverbal components as emojis and emoticons.

So, being quite professional in their fields (education and production of media products), the creators of the video present scientific information by combining a simple-to-perceive voiced popular science text with uncomplicated animation. Such a presentation is saturated with emotive components. This makes it possible to attract attention and arouse interest among the modern Internet audience, in particular among modern youth, who may lack the stock of knowledge, will and attentiveness for full-fledged education.