Punctuation as a means of prosody realization during communication in Facebook social network (on the example of the English-language version)

The article studies peculiar features of punctuation in the Internet comment referred to a genre of the Internet discourse. Virtual communication is defined as a written form of communication with some elements of oral speech, including spontaneity, expressiveness, linearity, correlation with the specific time interval flow. Considering the Internet comment to be a variant of oral speech that has been registered in a written form, the author describes main trends of punctuation marks usage in the English version of Facebook social network. Utterances from the network have been selected for studies regardless of age, gender and social class reference. On the basis of the textual contrastive analysis it was discovered that punctuation, reflecting prosodic phenomena in written speech, implements a distinctive feature of the Internet communication. The research helped to reveal some freedom in the usage of punctuation marks in the Facebook social network comments, which tells for changing a substandard way into ordinary. Violation from the norms of punctuation mark usage in social networks starts being evaluated as a norm. The article proves that new trends in the Internet communication reflect some development of the English language punctuation. The violation is not considered to be a communicative failure of the subjects of the Internet comments, on the contrary, it is viewed as a pragmatic statements, with a bit brighter emotional coloring.