Onyms in Internet communication and electronic environment: new phenomena and functions

Abstract

The development of electronic communication brings to rapid language and speech-communicative changes. These changes make the scientific task of their timely conceptualization urgent. The purpose of this study is to generalize and analyze the research results on the onyms functioning in the electronic environment and Internet communication. The analysis highlights two the main areas of the research that have developed in science to date. The functioning of the proper name in the Internet discourse is the study object of the first group. The Internet environment is mainly a source of language material according to this group research, which is analyzed considering the electronic communications features (its polycode, informality, interactivity). The feature of this group research is that its’ the main object is represented either by specific linguistic phenomena or special types of discourse, while electronic communication is a secondary feature for its highlight. The second research direction involves the study of new onomastic phenomena that owe their existence to the context of the electronic environment and its communicative, pragmatic, and technical features. This research direction implies both the detection of new types of onyms that were generated by Internet communications, and the description of their characteristic semantic, pragmatic, stylistic, and formal grammatical features. A special status among the objects studied in the second direction is given to such a phenomenon as a nickname, which implements a whole set of features that allow us to talk about its principal novelty and uniqueness. A nickname is the result of autonomy in terms of pragmatic and communication. This contributes to its use as a means of self-presentation and expression; also, a nickname has noticeable formal features that represent the ways of its construction (free choice of motivational bases, language play, active use of non-alphabetic characters). There is also noted an impact of new phenomena in Internet onomastics on the onomastic system and emphasized the need for closer attention to this influence.