On the issue of methodological reasons for language purism in Internet communications

Abstract

This article highlights one aspect of the triad “speech – writing – electronic form of speech,” which represents the problem of literacy in Internet communications. The purpose of the work is to point out a number of problems in the form of linguistic purism, the lack of clear terminology in relation to electronic communication, and shortcomings in the methodological and conceptual apparatus applied to the analysis of this linguistic object. The subject of the study is the norms of the Russian language, the object of analysis is fragments of texts containing a linguistic error. The authors proceed from the well-known fact in linguistics that spoken language and written language are different sign systems. It is known that the electronic form of speech is a fixation of the norms of spoken language. Consequently, it is impossible to approach the analysis of this form of speech only with the help of theories suitable for analyzing static text. The article shows that the roots of intolerance towards errors in network communication on the part of folk linguists lie precisely in this. The authors give examples of linguistic errors from different language areas: social networks, news aggregators, fiction, transcripts of oral speech. The linguistic object discussed in the article in the form of an electronic form of speech represents a certain cross-section that gives an up-to-date picture of the linguistic environment, which is informative for linguists. The main conclusion of the article is the need for a practical search for special tools that will limit the cumulative effect of language errors. But to do this, it is necessary to eliminate the one-way textual approach to all language formats. The conclusions of the article can be used to develop a strategy for moderating Internet content.