The electronic text - a cardinally new textual type?

The article is devoted to the detailed classification and analysis of a new phenomenon in text linguistics - electronic texts. In a globalised world, the electronic means of communication are swiftly gaining popularity with people of all ages and nationalities, superseding the traditional means of information exchange. Produced with the help of any electronic device (computer, mobile phone, tablet etc.) electronic texts are seen as a combination of features typical of both oral and written discourse. Applying not only existing criteria of classification, but also some new ones, the article introduces a many-sided approach to estimation of electronic texts, disclosing their uniqueness, channel, source, hypertextual layout, multimedia, finality, layout, status, function, language, situation of communication and roles, time and local relation, orality vs. literacy. The study reveals the following results. First of all, there is a sufficient number of electronic texts which possess overlapping characteristics with other types of electronic texts as well as with their traditional counterparts. Thus, written electronic discourse is actually a “prepared” traditional discourse revealing in practice such theoretical concepts as intertexuality, hypertext nature, polylogue and others. All in all, at present it seems inappropriate to examine electronic texts in a separate field of text linguistics without any reference to traditional texts.