NETSPEAK: LINGUISTIC FEATURES

Abstract

The article in question deals with the linguistic features of Netspeak. The development of modern technologies has made it possible to create a unique digital communication environment, which is realized textually, characterized by laconicism, violation of spelling and punctuation norms of language. Modern linguistics faces the important issue of studying the Netspeak phenomenon, which affects all spheres of human life. The purpose of the study is to define the concept of Netspeak, its communicative and linguistic features, to characterize its lexical and graphic features. The English Web 2020 corpus (enTenTen20) on the SketchEngine platform was analyzed to describe the frequency of abbreviations and acronyms usage, sources: texts of English-language Internet discourse for 2019-2021. As a result of the quantitative analysis, it was determined that the acronym LOL occurs most frequently – 875554 times, while acronym ILY occurs less frequently – 2216 times. The semantic analysis of the COCA corpus revealed abbreviations most found in blogs and web pages, abbreviations common in fiction, magazines and newspapers, scientific texts with a different denotative meaning. Having analyzed the English Web 2020 corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), we can conclude about the high frequency of using abbreviations in websites and blogs. The tendencies in the development of the digital communication environment, the constant growth of the number of abbreviations in the English network environment have prospects for further research