Epistolary genres of internet discourse: classification and modeling

Abstract

The presented work develops one of the sections of Internet linguistics, namely Internet genre studies, which remains at the stage of formation. The identifi cation of genres functioning in Internet discourse gave rise not only to the problem of their classification and description models, but also raised the question of what, in fact, should be considered a speech genre of electronic communication. Among the texts of electronic discourse, a special place is occupied by the electronic epistolary, which has specific features in comparison with traditional epistolary texts. The purpose of this article is to characterize the features of electronic epistolary, which involves the disclosure of issues related to (1) the understanding of Internet epistolary and its difference from traditional epistolary texts, (2) the construction of a typology of genres of Internet epistolary, (3) the choice of parameters for the model of their analysis and (4) demonstration of the effectiveness of this model by example one of the genres, namely the chat correspondence (using the example of a group chat of a scholarly and pedagogical team). The novelty of the research is characterized by (1) the classification of electronic epistolary genres, based on which the authors distinguish 1) traditional epistolary genres transferred to the electronic environment without signifi cant changes; 2) modified traditional epistolary genres that have been transformed to a greater or lesser extent after entering the electronic environment, and 3) network epistolary genres (educated and functioning only in the internet environment); (2) a model for describing epistolary genres of Internet discourse, providing media, linguopragmatic and linguostylistic parameters; (3) the results of the description of communication in the group chat of the professional community based on the analysis model presented in the study, namely texts related to the genre of “chat correspondence” of the hypergenre “Internet correspondence”. 

Keywords:

Internet discourse, electronic epistolary genres, “group chat” genre, classification, modeling