Introduction.

Digital technologies enabling instant transmission of information to the global community are making rapid strides. The origins of digital civilization may be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s when the new communication means started to take shape that were bound to drastically change information culture and lay the groundwork for the phenomenon of clip thinking, which accounts for the contemporary realities of information perception.

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© Malyuga E.N., Ermishina V.E., 2020

The multiple changes in the world in general and digitalization of all the domains of life in particular find a natural reflection in the language. The layer that is most prone to transformations in the one outside the literary language, which includes vulgar and abusive lexis, dialectisms, jargonisms, and colloquialisms.

The linguo-pragmatic analysis in this article is aimed at studying colloquialisms in the context of the social and status-based parameters of the addresser and addressee subject to the conditions and purposes of the speech act.

Colloquial lexis is widely used in professional discourse primarily as a tool of emotional and expressive impact on the recipient.

The purpose of this study is to analyze colloquialisms from the position of pragmatics in the context of sustainable development of digital civilization, as well as to consider the lexical-semantic field that includes colloquial expressions from two national variants of the English language: the British and the American ones. This purpose involves achieving the following goals: to identify the linguo-pragmatic characteristics of colloquialisms in professional discourse and the analyze the lexical-semantic colloquialism field “to spend money” in English-language mass media outlets.

The topicality of the research is determined by the fact that it elucidates poorly studied linguo-pragmatic aspects of colloquialisms in professional discourse in the context of digital civilization that catalyzed the colloquialization of the language.

The research novelty is that it studies the linguistic and extralinguistic specificity of colloquialisms within the lexical-semantic field “to spend money” in the professional sections of English-language media outlets.

Research methodology.

The research object of this paper is colloquial lexis forming the lexical-semantic field. The subject of the study is the linguo-pragmatic characteristics of colloquialisms in the context of digital civilization development.

The study of the linguo-pragmatic features of colloquialisms is based on the material of news and analytical articles published in the Business, Media and Technology professional sections of the internet outlet The Independent, the e-versions of The New York Times and The Guardian, the News and Current Affairs operational division of the BBC News, as well as on specialized dictionaries.

The paper uses descriptive, contextological and comparative research methods, as well as the continuous sampling method.

Research results.

1. Linguopragmatics as the principal approach to the study

Charles Sanders Peirce, an American philosopher, was one of the pioneers of pragmatics in the 19^th century. The development of linguopragmatics is connected to studying the language through the lens of communicative interactions.

Linguopragmatics is “an area of linguistics that investigates the functioning of language signs in the real conditions of speech communication” [1**], i.e. this area analyzes using language units in terms of age, gender, social and status-based characteristics of the addresser and addressee, as well as certain conditions and purposes of the speech act.

The theoretical underpinning of linguopragmatics is the theory of speech acts developed by the British philosopher John Austin. His ideas are reflected in the book “How to do Things with Words?” [1]. The formation of this theory fell on the 1960s and 1970s and is also connected with the name of John Searle, who advanced the ideas of the theory in his work “What is a Speech Act?” [2] Substantial contributions in the evolvement of linguopragmatics have also been made by N.D. Arutyunova, Ch. Bally, R. Jakobson, B. Bara, B. Birner, F. Recanati, and S. Chapman.

Linguopragmatics deals with studying speech situations which include utterances, their meaning and context, as well as addresser and addressee. The linguo-pragmatic approach to investigating colloquialisms in professional discourse is logical and is conditioned by the fact that this approach allows not only analyzing the form of colloquialisms but also their content and purposes of usage [3].

It should be noted that “the practical dimension of linguopragmatics is closely related to the development of communicative technologies” [1**; 5; 6].

1.2. The concept of digital civilization

The development of digital civilization is connected with the achievements of the second half of the 20^th century, in particular with the active advancement of information technologies and their incorporation in the daily life of society. “The creation of new telecommunication systems has made it possible to develop a single communicative space where information … acts as a cementing foundation for building a system of postindustrial society” [7. P. 102].

Digitalization in information and communication technologies have been an area of concentration for such researchers as David Chrystal, Jean-Francois Liotard, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, C. Moraru, and S. Herring.

The distinct attributes of the digital age arguably include the fragmentarity of world perception, which is formed through the prevalence of audiovisual information (radio, television, the Internet) over verbal information (books, newspapers, magazines). This may be explained by the fact that while the printed outlets normally use messages of strictly linear structure, as well as logical and coherent presentation of ideas, information technologies tend to utilize haphazard messages that follow each other in quick succession and do not require strong concentration. This is due to the fast pace of life and the necessity to have a timely and prompt access to information.

This leads to the development of the irrational, the so-called clip way of thinking, which excludes systemic cognition and the formation of cause and effect relations. This is proved by Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the stages in civilization development: “The development of electronic communication means brings us back to the pre-text era, and the linear sequence of signs ceases to be the base for culture” [8, p. 339], as the evolvement of information and communication technologies also entails restructuring people’s perception of this world, which is determined by the mosaic nature of clip culture.

It is precisely for this reason that new media (network mass media outlets) utilize various means (for example, the colloquialisms) to attract the attention of the readers, particularly in professional discourse dominated by terminology.

One of the most distinct features of the English-language professional discourse is that its communicative norm does not imply changes and instead includes multiple rules and strict restrictions of speech behavior, the organized and structured interaction of discourse participants, as well as the standardized expression of thoughts and ideas.

However, professional discourse today is increasingly filled with emotional and evaluative vocabulary, all the more so in the age of globalization and unification.

2. The concept of colloquialisms

One of the efficient tools to attract readers’ attention is suing colloquial vocabulary. It has been the subject of studies of Russian and foreign linguists, such as B.A. Larin, V.A. Khomykov, A.D. Shveitser, E. Noeland, E. Partridge and others.

The term “colloquialism” was introduced by B.A. Larin in the 1920s. According to the Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, colloquial lexis is “one of the forms of the national language that, along with dialectal and jargon speech as well as literary language, constitutes the oral non-codified domain of the general national speech communication – the vernacular, in addition to folk (vulgar) language and jargons” [2**, p. 402]. Colloquialisms may be used in the speech of all social groups.

The works by V.A. Khomyakov and T.M. Belyayeva present the fundamental definition of the English lexical colloquialisms: “a complex lexical-semantic category, … the totality of socially determined lexical systems (jargon, argot) and stylistically substandard lexical layers (“low” colloquialisms, slangisms, and vulgarisms), which are characterized by considerable differences and discrepancies in the core functions, as well as in the sociolexical, pragmatic, functional-semantic and stylistic aspects” [9, 4].

The contemporary linguistics still offers no distinct demarcation between the notions “colloquialism” and “slang”. For instance, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English [3**, p. 9] does not differentiate the terms “slang”, “jargon” and “colloquialism”. All the diversity of these language phenomena is embraced in the notion of “substandard/non-standard English.”

V.A. Khomyakov in his work “Introduction to Studying Slang – the Core Component of English Colloquialisms” singled out the distinct features of slang: being a component of colloquial lexis, it has an emotional and evaluative nature and is relatively sustainable for a particular historic period” [10].

It is also noteworthy that slang is used primarily by various social groups (e.g. representatives of a certain age or professional group), while colloquialisms have more of a common nature and are used in professional discourse with the view to influence a broad audience.

Colloquialisms are actualized mostly at the lexical level, hence we deem it necessary to identify systemic relations of lexical units within the lexical-semantic field.

2.1. Definition of the lexical-semantic field

The lexical-semantic field being “the largest lexical-semantic paradigm unites words of various parts of speech correlating to one fragment of reality and having one attribute (common seme) in the lexical meaning” [4**. P. 458]. Semantic fields are capable of self-organizing due to the continuous emergence of new emotional and expressive elements.

The Great Encyclopedic Dictionary. Linguistics gives the definition of the field - “a field is a complex of language (primarily lexical) units united by their content and reflecting the conceptual, subject-matter and functional similarity of the denoted phenomena” [2**, p. 380].

The constituent elements of the lexical-semantic field are lexical-semantic groups of words. L.M. Vasilyev believes that “the term of lexical-semantic group may define any semantic class of words (lexemes) unified by at least one common lexical paradigmatic seme or at least one common semantic multiplier” [11, p.105-113].

Research results in quantitative data. In the course of analyzing the Business, Media and Technology professional sections of the English-language mass media outlets The Independent, BBC News, The Guardian and The New York Times, we have identified and singled out colloquial verbs making up the lexical-semantic field “to spend money”, as well as their linguistic and extralinguistic singularities.

Let us give a characteristic of the research material through the lens of linguopragmatics, i.e. first, we outline the social and status parameters of the addresser and addressee. The materials encompass The New York Times, one of America’s largest daily periodicals by circulation; The Independent, a British Internet media outlet; The Guardian, a daily British newspaper, and BBC News, which is the News and Current Affairs operational division of the British media corporation The BBC. These media outlets publish news in similar sections: politics, economy, business, technologies, science, culture, and sport. Their target audience is a broad range of readers: businessmen, economists, and researchers from the entire world, along with many others.

Second, let us mention the conditions and purposes of the speech acts. We have studied examples from the e-versions of said sources available online. The purpose of these outlets is to convey news information to the audience, while the readers’ goal is to familiarize themselves with it.

All the examples fulfill the intention of emotional impact. Therefore, due to clip thinking of the contemporary reader, the publishers seek to use a wide range of colloquial expressions within one article.

It is noteworthy that the article considers examples from two national variants of English professional discourse in the context of digital age advancement, whose typical features are the single, unified content and form of notions.

We single out the lexical-semantic field “to spend money” consisting of the verbs quoted in the table below: