No abstract

The results of a study of the characteristics of German-speaking online petitions on the openPetition platform, constituting a spatio-temporal, substantive, collective-personal systemic-communicative dimension of protest; studying the current manifestations of the mediation of politics and Net-thinking as an attribute of modern mediation in the studied communicative practices of protest are presented in the article. The integrative nature of electronic petitions is revealed, which is determined by their multifunctionality, discursive hybridity and stylistic syncretism. The design features in online petitions of a complex addressee (individual addressee and collective co-addressee) and complex addressee (mass and target addressee); relevant communication strategies and tactics of the mass addressee, individual addressee and co-addressees are described. The regularities of the agenda and discursive construction of the problem in online petitions are determined. The methods of forming and maintaining Internet solidarity in the studied protest practice are described. The manifestations of mediation of politics and personality in the analyzed practices are revealed. Attributes and actual reflection in online petitions of a new type of thinking (Net-thinking) as a consequence of the specifics of modern mediation of protest communication are described. The results of the study make a certain contribution to further understanding of the relationship between technological and sociocultural changes.

The paper presents an analysis of linguistic pragmatics of restaurant online discourse that is plunged into studying the content of English versions of British restaurant websites. The authors state that the investigated segment of virtual restaurant communication is organized on the basis of a linguistic-and-pragmatic model, which is constructed from the following components: discourse goal, discourse addresser's intention / communicative-pragmatic purposes with corresponding strategies and tactics. Special attention is paid to the main communication strategies of the discourse under analysis, among which there are the strategies of creating positive emotional mood, constructing an attractive image of the restaurant, increasing the activity of restaurant guests. It is established that these strategies are implemented by a set of tactics. The authors distinguish and describe verbal (lexical, lexical-grammatical and stylistic features), as well as non-verbal means that are used by site moderators for implementing the desired tactics. It is stated that the most frequent linguistic means are lexical units with emotional-expressive and attitudinal meanings, metaphorical and pleonastic constructions, modal verbs, superlatives; interrogative-responsive and imperative structures; non-verbal means of communication are represented by graphics, font and colour highlighting, various illustrations and photographs. The suggested linguistic and pragmatic model uncovers the following restaurant online discourse regularities: location of zones with verbal or non-verbal dominating means is defined by visual assessment factors of information representation on the website.

The article raises the issues of neology and ecolinguistics. The authors specify the criteria of ecolinguistic approach to studying neologisms based on ecolinguistic monitoring which helps to elicit factors that influence the formation of new words, spheres in which they function in language as well as to define the type of new words and number of loanwords among them. The data under analysis is compiled by about 3 000 new words that appeared in English and Dutch in the last three decades. The authors elicit the main changes in the ecology of the Dutch language on different levels in the stated time frame together with the factors that motivate the formation of neologisms. Among extralinguistic factors the authors list such determinants as the emergence of new realia; scientific and technical advancement; globalization and development of the Internet. To intralinguistic factors the following are referred: linguistic economy; expressiveness of linguistic means; systematization of the vocabulary; unification of linguistic signs; conversion and the shift in stylistic usage of the words can also generate neologisms. Future development of the ecolinguistic approach in neology will help to track the evolution of modern national language and preserve its ecolinguistic balance. The research results can be used in language education, lexicographic practice or state language policy.

Abstact. The paper analyzes the vocabulary of the German science-popular medical discourse as exemplified in the German online media. The relevance of the study is due to the growing interest of non-professional participants of medical communication, as the main recipients of this institutional discourse, to the processes of self-diagnosis and self-treatment, which require the expansion of medical knowledge. The paper examines the texts of more than 40 publications in detail, establishes their distinctive structural features, genres and vocabulary. It is shown that the dominant genre in the studied type of discourse is a science-popular article. It has been established that the lexicon of the type of discourse under study includes common vocabulary, general scientific vocabulary and medical terminology. We consider some ways to clarify the terms: explanations, the use of doublet forms, hypertext links, as well as the use of international word-building elements. The types of phraseological units and metaphors that function in science-popular medical discourse are characterized: it is shown that phraseological units based on the similarity of the phenomena of the medical field with the phenomena of the animal world, as well as with everyday life realities, and metaphors based on images of the game, war and court are used more frequently. The results of the study prove the need to expand the scope of study of medical science-popular discourse by considering it in linguopragmatic and stylistic aspects.