Semantics and internet language

Бюллетень науки и практики / Bulletin of Science and Practice

UDC 81                                            

Semiotics started to be a key approach to the studies related to culture in the half of the 1960s due to the work of Barthes called “Mythologies” which is a compilation of his famous essays and began to gain even greater attention and scholarly awareness on a global scale. Writing in 1964, Roland Barthes declared that semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification [1].

Although semiotics involves a number of various methodological facets and theoretical points it is not considered to be an academic discipline. One of the broadly-known definitions is the one stated by Umberto Eco that says semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign and involves the study not only of what we refer to as signs in everyday speech, but of anything which stands for something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects [2]. Whilst for the linguist Saussure, semiology was a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life, for the philosopher Charles Peirce semiotic was the formal doctrine of signs which was closely related to Logic. For him, a sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. He declared that every thought is a sign [3].

Semiotics and the branch of linguistics which is known as semantics have a common relation with the meaning of signs, but John Sturrock argues that whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs mean [4]. For Morris (deriving this threefold classification from Peirce), semiotics embraced semantics, along with the other traditional branches of linguistics: semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for; syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs; pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters [5].

Semiotics is far more frequently used while analyzing texts which are mainly observed in various modes of medium in verbal or non-verbal forms. Text means a message which involves audio or video recordings as well as signs such as words, numbers, images or gestures all of which are widely used in a certain medium of communication. A number of contemporary cultural theorists have focused more on the growing popularity of visual media in comparison with linguistic media in current modern society. Thinking in ecological terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages led the Russian cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman to coin the term semiosphere to refer to the whole semiotic space of the culture in question [6].

Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of semiology and stated that linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics. As far as we are concerned the linguistic problem is first and foremost semiological. If one wishes to discover the true manner of language systems, one must first consider what they have in common with all other systems of the same kind. In this way, light will be thrown not only upon the linguistic problem. By considering rites, customs etc. as signs, it will be possible, we believe, to see them in a new perspective. The need will be felt to consider them as semiological phenomena and to explain them in terms of the laws of semiology [7, 8].

Pierce classifies three modes in semiotics as follows symbol (numbers, alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words, phrases, morse code, traffic lights), icon (realistic sounds in programs, sound effects in radio drama, imitative gestures) and index (natural signs, medical symptoms, pointers, indexical words), all of which are commonly used in media [3]. In Uzbek medium of communication audio-visual and iconic means are mainly employed by different sections of society. Voice-recording, video, emoji, gif and other tools are mostly visible in informal or interpersonal chats, meanwhile, pictures, schemes, tables are comparatively common in far more formal or public chats. Today this way of communication is getting even more popular and year by year more researchers getting their focus on this topic [9]. The Internet is an electronic, global, and interactive medium, and each of these properties has consequences for the kind of language found there. The most fundamental influence arises out of the electronic character of the channel. Most obviously, a user’s communicative options are constrained by the nature of the hardware needed in order to gain Internet access. Thus, a set of characters on a keyboard determines productive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be sent); and the size and configuration of the screen determines receptive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be seen) [10].

Among Uzbek linguists D. A. Rustamov, M. S.Madaminova, D. S. Saidkadirova, D.X. Kadirbekova have been researching on the topic of Internet and language. However, the field semiotics is relatively new in Uzbek linguistics and has recently begun to be investigated. Among Uzbek researchers we can find some materials written by Sh. Safarov and A. Iriskulov related to semiotics [16]..

Today there are over 60 emoticons usually offered by message exchange systems, and some dictionaries list several hundred possibilities using orthographic features. However, despite the creative artistry, the semantic role of emoticons has proved to be very limited. An individual emoticon can still allow many readings – the basic smile), for example, can mean sympathy, delight, amusement, and much more – and these can be disambiguated only by referring to the verbal context, without care, moreover, they can increase the misunderstanding: adding a smile to an utterance which is ironic can be taken negatively as well as positively [10].

Netspeak led to the introduction of such smileys or emoticons. These are combinations of keyboard characters designed to show an emotional facial expression: they are typed in sequence on a single line, and placed after the final punctuation mark of a sentence. Almost all of them are read sideways. The two basic types express positive attitudes and negative attitudes respectively (the omission of the nose element seems to be solely a function of typing speed or personal taste) [10].

As the development of digital technologies is constantly moving forward new methods of communication are also coming into public use and already developed ones are getting even more sophisticated [15]. The popular impression, created largely by the media, is that the written language encountered on mobile phone screens is weird. It has been labeled textese, slanguage, a new hi-tech lingo, a hybrid shorthand, a digital virus. It has been described as foreign, alien, and outlandish. It is so much viewed as a new language that texters have been called bilingual [11].

Heyya everybody

How are u )

Me too bro )

Omg, who is online ?

That’s great, how are u sis )

I am great thx

The link between semiotics and means of communication is very significant. Almost in every pace of our life we obviously come across different signs and the way we share information is not an exception here as well [12]. Signs help us to ease the process of communication as it economizes much time, effort and words doubtlessly. Here we can analyze some examples for non-standard way of exchanging information as it represents both words and symbols:

: - @ kids im zzz

when he frowns at me see you in five minutes kiss would you smile for me please it’s a great place

I am troubled and Iam stressed waiting for a message screaming kids

I am sleeping

The changes in our current communicative behavior are something that cannot be avoided due to the fact that modern devices of information technologies come into our lives unstoppably as time progressively goes by. The English language has been around for many centuries, and it continues to gain dominance as the years go by. English has been deemed a very powerful language due to the expanse of its usage globally. A dependable mode of communication is essential for communication to work, and English has become the key for almost all societal and business sectors of the world [15]. Nowadays most of the youth in Uzbekistan are aware of the knowledge of the English language. It is considered as one of the most prominent factors to get in touch with any corner of the world. The electronic medium, to begin with, presents us with a channel which facilitates and constrains our ability to communicate in ways that are fundamentally different from those found in other semiotic situations. Many of the expectations and practices which we associate with spoken and written language, no longer obtain. The first task is therefore to investigate the linguistic properties of the so-called “electronic revolution”, and to take a view on whether the way in which we use language on the internet is becoming so different from our previous linguistic behavior that it might genuinely be described as revolutionary [11].

After analyzing the Netspeak from various angles we came to the point that, the Internet demonstrates a remarkable expansion of the expressive options available in a language – far exceeding the kinds of stylistic expansion that took place with the arrival of printing and broadcasting. These earlier media introduced many new varieties of language, such as news articles, advertisements, sports commentaries, and weather forecasts. The same sort of thing has happened on the Internet, illustrated by such new varieties as email, chat, texting, blogging, tweeting, instant messaging, and social networking. The difference is that the Internet is so much larger than the earlier media – it is capable of subsuming the worlds of print and broadcasting – and changes more rapidly. We therefore need to learn to manage it, and this point applies not only to Internet content but also to the language in which the content is expressed [13].

The way we communicate today is closely attached to the latest opportunities created by digital technologies. It is definitely different from the speech we made a few years ago as current one is full of audio-visual and various iconic tools.

It is always difficult to predict the future, when it comes to technology. Perhaps it will remain as part of an increasingly sophisticated battery of communicative methods, to be used as circumstances require. Or perhaps in a generation’s time texting will seem as archaic a method of communication as the typewriter or the telegraph does today, and new styles will have emerged to replace it. For the moment, texting seems here to stay, though its linguistic character will undoubtedly alter as its use spreads among the older population [14].