Pirmas žvilgsnis į tinklaraščių kalbą

20 Languages culture | 81 RITA MILIŪNAITĖ Lithuanian Language Institute 1st Look at the Blog Language The famous phrase of Bill Gates, the founder of the software corporation “Microsoft”, “If there is no language on the Internet, there will be no language at all” has been paraphrased over time: soon it was applied to companies and institutions, and now – to individuals. In fact, it would be difficult to find a socially active person about whom there is not even the slightest information on the Internet. Moreover, the Internet is so strongly penetrating into everyday life that now everyone who wants can create his own “camp”. 1. Beginning of the blog era About a decade ago, so-called blogs began to appear on the World Wide Web – public internet blogs that anyone can write. There is no consensus on their origin, but most commonly mentioned is 1994, when one American Internet browser started publishing daily news on the Internet: to tell about films seen, books read, in other words, to write a kind of diary. Today, blogs are counted in millions and it is said that they double every six months. Around the year 2000, such blogs began to appear on the Lithuanian Internet. About 2004, the same year when the word blog (“blog”) was declared the word of the year by the American company Merriam-Webster, Lithuanian blogs began to increase rapidly, and in 2006–2007 there was a boom in their creation in Lithuanian. For example, seven authors who started writing blogs on one website in 2007, about a year later provide the following statistics: the site has: entries – 4123, comments – 18370, total words – 812101. we're writing the thirteenth volume. (www.nezinau.lt, visited by r. 21 David Crystal, best known to us as the author of the recently published Lithuanian book “The Death of Language”1, in his other book “Language and the Internet”, the second edition of 2008 05 09) which, devotes nine pages to blogs (essentially to describe their various manifestations) (Crystal 2006: 238–247). He admits that when he published the first edition of the book in 2001, he expected that there would be a change later on the Internet, because some of them had already begun to appear, but had not yet gained greater public attention. but Crystal had no idea that five years later he would need a separate chapter in the book for all new forms of the Internet. One of those forms is that of blogs, which spread rapidly on the internet and whose language is so different from other forms of the internet that it must be examined separately. so what are these blogs and what's special about their language? In order to answer this question, we need to discuss more broadly the peculiarities of blogs themselves, because only in this way it will be possible to understand what their role in public communication is, and at the same time to start raising the question for further consideration: what is the significance of the blog language and its possible impact on the development of the Lithuanian language as a whole? The emergence and growth of blogs is associated with the qualitative leap of the Internet as a global computer network. about 2004 the term proposed for the new generation of Internet services and technologies Web 2.0. Lithuanian media wrote about it: Web Data drives the 2.0. The web is presented as a platform on which new services can be developed. The network effect: the more people use a certain service, the greater the benefit for all participants in the process. (Vedrickas 2007) These new information technologies make it easy, even without special programming knowledge, to create and manage the desired information on the Internet – easier and more convenient than personal websites. this possibility has been used to create blogs. This is a public, according to the author's wishes at any time managed and updated website, where most often published various personal information: tells about their activities, hobbies, travel impressions, expressed opinion on any issues, sharing information 1 David Crystal. The Death of Language, Vilnius: tyto alba, 2005. 22 Languages culture | 81 (for example, about buying a new model of household appliances, about online exchanges of items, various social actions), publishing their creations, photos, video and audio recordings, etc. The reasons for writing blogs can be various: the need to share thoughts and knowledge with other people, to pour out and remove accumulated negative emotions, to satisfy one's ego, to express one's individuality, the need for creativity - to write poems, short stories, etc. (Klaustux)2 Since the entries are automatically dated and published with the latest, the website becomes similar to a kind of diary. Each record has its own title. It is designed to immediately attract attention and stand out among other authors' posts in the latest posts summaries, for example: • about Monday and "cat" claws • yes, yes... during lessons • Why do doctors write prescriptions by hand? In addition to the permanent posts, which are published in the center of the page and are grouped by topics and collected in an archive, the blog's edges are filled with various links to other (usually friends', colleagues') blogs and favorite sites. It is common for a blog to have a comment section below each post, where readers can express their opinions, and a list of visitors' comments can be displayed at the edge of the blog. Here’s what the text looks like, reviewing the blogs the author liked to read with underlined hyperlinks, from which you can immediately get to those blogs: Well, how good that today is only Mother’s Day (well, there’s also Saturday and St. Florian’s Day, but that’s not the point), because yesterday’s conglomerate did not succeed. but the result is still positive: most escaped to nature for a walk, to drive a computer in the yard for the first time, to enjoy live music, to eat pizza in a new place, or just to admire the creations of the young mother's helpers. (one-of-a-kind) authors decide for themselves whether they will remain completely anonymous – only with a nickname, or will provide data about themselves (name, surname, date of birth, place of residence – usually with the precision of a city, etc.). 2 Since our printed literature does not yet have any tradition of quoting blogs (on the Internet this is replaced by appropriate hyperlinks), this time the pseudonym or name is indicated next to the quotes – as signed by the author himself. The graphic and language of the quoted texts have not, of course, been edited to reflect the true image. r. MiluNaItĖ. 23 Websites that perform a certain function of hosting and hosting blogs usually provide lists of the most recent and most read posts. In this way, entire online communities3 are being created, with groups of bloggers with common interests within them. You can subscribe to the news of the desired blogs, write reviews of the best posts, create blogger guides – in a word, a whole new virtual space is being created. In addition to personal blogs, news portals, as well as various institutions – television, radio companies, etc. (for example, delfi.lt, alfa.lt, mtv.lt, etc.) have started to create websites of this genre on their websites. This is done mainly for advertising purposes, to create an image of easy direct communication with stakeholders, since institutional blogs are written by institutional staff (and usually not anonymously). Professional journalists, taking advantage of its popularity, sometimes adapt this genre to their direct professional goals. On the World Wide Web, separate types of blogs are crystallizing as a promising Internet genre (see further in the continuation of this article – Millionaire (2008). An important feature of blogs is that they do not function each for itself, but are connected by various links (hyperlinks, addresses of colleagues, etc.) with other blogs, so there is a constant dissemination and exchange of information. such a set of blogs on the Internet, in the absence of a more solid Lithuanian equivalent (blog? someone's blog?), is so far usually called blog(o)sphere. 3.Bloggers and their aspirations among various personal information bloggers indicate a pseudonym, but there are also real names, surnames. Even if we reject the misleading data, which always occurs for various reasons, it will not be inaccurate to say that the youngest bloggers are from early adolescence – approximately from the age of 12-13, when you already have some computer skills, because a blog with certain tools offered by websites must be created and maintained by yourself. Thus, the level of anonymity varies greatly, but it is significantly lower than in the electronic discourse of the Internet (discussion forums and comments).4, 3 A new branch of anthropology – digital ethnography – is interested in the peculiarities of these communities that exist on the Internet and create social networks (social networks). 4) the term discourse has several meanings: 1) any text associated with the environment of its creation and functioning; 2) a specific area of language (e.g., scientific, political discourse); 3) interaction 24 Languages Culture | 81 where signing only under a nickname is the norm of online communication. The level of anonymity of bloggers is largely determined by the recipient: if it is primarily friends, then certain personal identity marks are required. Only detailed research can show how much the decrease in anonymity or the complete publicity of the author affects the level of language. So far, after examining a small number of blogs written by authors of different ages, it can be assumed that the language of authors who write texts not anonymously is more orderly, because they feel more responsibility for the public word. They understand that they are entering a public space, but a slightly different one, one that demands more responsibility than the anonymous electronic discourse. about the language of anonymous internet comments Leonidas Donskis writes: Do we not think about the effects on fifteen-year-olds of the barbaric language used in anonymous comments about ethnic minorities or the most eminent people of a country? After all, we have blurred the line between public and private talk – what no one should hear when people joke privately is now increasingly becoming our official political discourse and helping us to achieve fame and popularity. Is it no longer clear that we are already on the way to the legalization of the pub lexicon in public life and politics? (Donskis 2008) In blogs, this “smukle lexikon” is really rare. The authors of the blogs themselves say that for a blogger “good name, prestige is very important”, because it depends on whether the ideas he publishes will spread quickly and widely, or whether there will be echoes to them. Here is one author’s reasoning in comments about blogger’s reputation: I thought for a long time when I wrote my post about viskisieliai, that maybe it was not worth doing it? And I don’t write mountain records precisely because I don’t want to jump too much in a public place, i.e. basically in an official environment, because it is not clear whether it is formal or not, so we choose a worse / safer option. Even those blogs that I write anonymously are not written despite the reputation. in online communities “reputation” is even more important than in real life, because you will never meet as many people in real life as you do online, unless you are some kind of Bell 5. (Dominykas) vus, discussional communication (see Marcinkevičienė 2008: 15–16). In this article, electronic discourse is not referred to as a set of texts in the electronic medium, but only those texts that perform the function of direct (interactive) communication. These are usually small messages when communicating in real time or over a period of time. They can be written on a computer or mobile phone: online comments, posts on discussion forums, e-mails, phone messages, instant (or instant messaging) messages (e.g. "skype" application) and so on. 5 The name of a well-known entertainment personality. r. MiluNaItĖ. A first look at the blog language 25 What do bloggers aim for, what motivates them to write? For some it is a temporary fashion, a psychologically explained desire to immortalize – “Here was I”. For others, it is the first serious attempt at public self-expression, because, as mentioned, electronic discourse cannot replace it. In a co-author survey, a few answers to what a blog is were quite accurate: A place where you publish half of what you talk about. your virtual form of expression. For young people, blogs are primarily a matter of socialization – the search for friends, companions, and thus an attempt to identify with peers (Huffaker, Calvert 2005). The role of language is also important here, as it has specific features when used by young people. The texts of some authors really resemble the genre of a diary: they are written for themselves, the only difference being that everyone can read them. Sometimes it is like a notebook, which the person himself can find on the Internet at any time for his convenience. It is quite popular in this genre to include a “note to (my) self”, thus separating the part of the text that is really important only to the author himself: Everything in our heads, everything in our attitude, mine too! (Note to myself. in English this phrase sounds better, so please do not be angry). (seraphim) or a Lithuanian woman studying abroad writes: And this question would remain unanswered, showing some pointless motivation towards no one knows what, but the brochure of the University of Management in Strasbourg stuck in front of my eyes very quickly explains the purpose of all this. (Note to self - Learn French). (Viktorija) thus the age of bloggers significantly determines the content of published texts, which also depends on the authors’ interests, education, occupation and similar factors. 4. Content of blogs Since the content of blogs is not controlled by anyone and is left to the author’s responsibility (when starting a new blog, their websites introduce the general rules and warn about personal responsibility), for many this is a way to publicly express their opinion and seek fellowship. 26 Languages Culture | 81 languages seem very attractive. For this reason, in civic-active societies, such as the United States, blogs have been used primarily to express political views, especially on the fight against terrorism, as well as to react to various social events, share social experiences, etc. in Lithuania professional media opinions about the role of blogs in our society are very contradictory: from the statement that Web 2.0 develops a culture of dilettantes (Virginijus savkynas), to blogs as professional media diggers (Virginijus Valentinavičius)6. According to specialists, in Lithuania there is a much greater inclination towards personal blog content, blogs are apolitical. At the same time, there is a fear that these electronic blogs are becoming competitors of professional journalism. According to Aurelijus Katkevičius, blogs are the best way to show what is interesting to the public: if a topic is widely commented on the Internet, it is almost certain that it will be discussed in the newspaper the next day. However, the electronic medium and the latest technologies allow not only to express one’s opinion on the issues of interest, but also to include other interlocutors in the virtual conversation: [...] the more important thing in the blogosphere is not the in-depth study of the topic, but the invitation to discussion. The role of the community is more important here, because one of the most important tasks is to provoke discussion. (Šarūnas Girdėnas) One blogger describes the relationship between blogs and professional media as follows: [...] traditional media must definitely change and find its place on the new map. but it will always remain in one form or another. a blogger will never be a professional journalist. And that's good, because everyone has to do their job. A professional journalist will collect and verify information every day, while a blogger, if it is not his main occupation, only when there is time. […] therefore I am very skeptical about the ideas that blogs (bloggers) are/will be better than the media (journalists). I think we have to look at it in a slightly different way: these are different activities, with different processes and often different objectives. Media and blog are not a substitute, but a complement, and in the future these two channels will coexist in symbiosis. (gedzius29) Professional journalists and bloggers have different positions and responsibilities. According to one blogger, a journalist writes an article re6 These opinions are from the papers read at the second blogger conference on 5 April 2008. Many of her articles are quoted and discussed by her own bloggers (for example, the conference review is available on the Internet: http://www.ore.lt/article.php?action=get&id=1007845). r. MiluNaItĖ. A first look at the language of blogs for 27 doctors, “the author of the blog – directly to the reader. A journalist can get the back of the editorial board, [...] a blogger [...] goes straight to the front" (uniform). therefore, the forms of blogs and their creation possibilities are endless, the variety of authors and content is the greatest, and this makes this web genre difficult to define, unpredictable and incomprehensible. it seems that everyone who doesn't write blogs. Who's reading? David Crystal answers this question in a humorous way: it seems, unfortunately, that the vast majority of them are not read except by a linguist who has accidentally lost his way through the blogosphere (Crystal 2006: 246). In fact, the most well-known and popular blogs have far more readers than newspapers. and all the other “written” space often remains without echo. Anyway, the bloggers themselves believe that this innovation in the online world is “an extremely good way for people to spread their own ideas and creations, to discuss and find companions” (the same). 5. The problem of terminology English blog was first used in 1997. it's a word of atypical action. It was first published in 1996 as a web-based journal, and later as a web-based magazine (with a web-based website). One Internet user with a sense of humour etymologically identified the weblog as a combination of the personal pronoun we (‘we’) and the pronoun verb blog (‘blogging’, i.e. ‘writing a blog’), thus separating the adjectively indefinite subject blog. Later, many new derivatives of the new word blog began to appear for various things related to blogs – for their writers (blogger), for action (blogging), for the whole of internet blogs (blogosphere), for blog entries sent by mobile phones (moblog), for video, audio or photo entries (videoblog (vlog), audioblog, photoblog), etc. One of the newest types of blogs, known as klog (from knowledge log), has not yet been detected in the Lithuanian part of the Internet. These blogs are mainly created by organizations and institutions for business purposes (experience sharing) and educational purposes. 7 One of the meanings of the English word log (abbreviation of logbook) is indicated as “(ship, plane) logbook” (alKoNas), but in Lithuanian it may also correspond to the word dienynas (cf. DŽ6: “for a day or otherwise marking the date, a book of some institution or personal data is filled in; journal”). 28 Languages culture | 81 In the unregulated Internet usage, strangeness blòg, although accidentally became a homograph of the Lithuanian adjective blõgas, began to spread strongly with the first Lithuanian blogs. This homonymy is often used as a play on words: rogoznyj ended [...] with the slogan: “there is nothing good that would not go to blog”. So, from now on, life’s blogging does not mean what Lithuanians are used to complaining about, but quite the opposite – more freedom and accordingly more joy. (Virgis Valentinavičius) Here is another blog post (underlined places indicate hyperlinks to the blog): Not bad, but good and beautiful In fact, I read aušra’s blog about her trip to the mountains, then Iva’s blog about piranhas and decided to write a good one. about the theatre. or rather a circus. and if even more precise – I decided not to write much, but better show. Good and beautiful. Girls look at life too complicated. Everything is always bad for them. and sometimes it’s good for me. that's why I'm writing about it. Especially since our It commander, the antant, always demands “good news”. (andrius Vaitkevičius) Most of all, of course, the borrowed word blogas is used (various variants of its spelling: blog’as, BLOGas). less frequently – diary, electronic or online diary, very rarely – blog and perhaps the most common of all Lithuanian variants, claiming to become the official word of the common language – blog. The proposal to replace blogs with electronic blogs was discussed by their authors at their first conference in 2007, and Virginijus Valentinavičius, who attended that conference, commented on this problem of terminology in his blog as follows: funny mockery was received by the news that the state language commission has banned the word “blogas” and proposes to use the more correct in its opinion “internetinis dienoraštis” – convenient and elegant, about like a blonde’s leather shoes (again the commission’s hand – the automatic spellcheck just corrected the word used by my grandfather – “kerzavi”). Why does the respectable State Language Commission not want to ban the word “commission”? After all, it is not Lithuanian, and clearly too short and too comfortable. moreover, how far can language regulation on the Internet go? will I need to hire linguists to edit the comments on the articles? will our glorious state organize a virtual police force to search and punish Internet users who write, speak and think incorrectly? and when you're done with the internet, you'll be able to take on the phone conversation language? r. MiluNaItĖ. A first look at the blog language 35 more and less common languages. The main criterion by which Crystal distinguishes the language and style of the several blogs he examines in his book from the general language is this: if this text were to be published, it would be corrected. The blog style reflects an unrestricted flow of thought, which does not always coincide with the boundaries of a grammatical sentence, and this brings the language closer to that of the author. Until the emergence of a common language, letters were written in this style, and in the Middle Ages no one would have paid attention to this style (as can be seen from some manuscripts of court proceedings) because it was the norm for all written texts. Later, in the second half of the 18th century, it was replaced by the requirements of the common language, and public written texts usually did not appear unprocessed. blogs – again a unique opportunity to see raw written language. to be written language in its barest, uncovered form (Crystal 2006: 245). The world of blogs is so wide and varied that it would be possible to prove anything: that the Lithuanian language is deteriorating, that it is almost dead, or vice versa – that everything is only for the better, that people are becoming more and more literate. However, more thorough research should also reveal certain tendencies. As we have already seen from the previous examples, a public agreement of authors on language issues is sought, so it can not be said that this language expression functions completely chaotically. so first we have to try to determine how blogs’ language norms are working, what language standard is being sought. it should become clear whether there is a global standard or whether there are different trends. Furthermore, it is necessary to assess the relationship of this language variant with other language variants, in particular with the common language. It is equally important to examine what means of expression are characteristic of the blog language and what functions they perform in the texts of this language variant. seems that there are good opportunities to be interested in the language and style of individual authors (idiolects). Having set the goal of studying the language of blogs and having formulated the problems related to such research, the variety of authors, topics and writing styles that has opened up before our eyes forces us to look for specific research directions and tasks13. havetina gal13 For more information on the possibilities of sociolinguistic research of blog language and on the characteristics of blog language as a specific variant of usage, see r i t a M i l i ū n a i t ė. the blog language's position in the current usage schema. – Online magazine in Lithuanian language, 2008. Online access: www.lietuviukalba.lt 36 Languages Culture | 81 voje and the fact that this language variant is very open to rapid changes due to the specificity of the Internet. The most tangible criteria that would help to navigate in the multitude of blogs could be twofold – according to the authors and according to the content of the blogs: 1) social characteristics of the authors: • age (different age groups), • social status, • education. 2) the theme. For a long time, there was a considerable gap in the research of the actual written usage, because most of the Lithuanian written usage consisted of public language, which usually reached the addressee only through intermediaries – language editors. Students’ writings, unedited manuscripts, etc. are much more difficult to access for such research, because they are not intended for the public, but only for a limited number of people. blog language is not managed by anyone from outside, created without intermediaries. so blogs show real written usage. stable written form of blogs, access to texts without obstacles creates all the conditions for fulfilling the dreams of language researchers – to directly observe the natural language being created and functioning. For the norm-setters of the common language, such studies can help to understand the changes in the Lithuanian language in an environment close to the common language, and how these two forms of public language – the common language and the free language of the Internet medium (the true language) – affect each other. According to one blogger, common language is what language managers try to put into the mouths of speakers, and real language is what they could take back from people’s mouths (r.Zu). This article does not aim to cover all of this diversity. is concerned with revealing only one more distinctive feature of the blog language. the blog entries collected for the initial exploratory investigation (a total of nearly 10014) from the internet sources listed at the end of the article will continue to be used. 2. Language peculiarities of Lithuanian blogs In order to better understand the peculiarities of the blog language, it is useful to compare it with the better studied electronic discourse (in its narrow sense, mentioned in footnote 3). Blog entries are usually up to 100 words long, less often up to 14 In order to thoroughly study the language of blogs, a representative and methodologically sound database must be established. The aim of this article is to give you a general look at some of the difficult areas of blogging. r. MiluNaItĖ. A first look at the blog language 37,200 words. In this they differ particularly clearly from commentaries, which are usually a few sentences and, most importantly, are completely non-informative on their own without the main text that is commented on (Marcinkevičienė 2005: 23). blog text is longer, has an independently developed theme and therefore a logical structure (at least several paragraphs). At the same time, there is no longer a completely free anonymity, which allows unrestricted behaviour in the electronic discourse, so blog posts become more personal and responsible. This also has a noticeable effect on their language: it becomes more organized. it takes more effort to create such a language than electronic discourse. Although the language and style of this field are just beginning to develop, it is still clear that much is moving from electronic discourse. but in the long run, it is to be assumed, that certain writing trends will also appear, there will be limits beyond which some things will seem to the readers as the authors' exaggeration. As we have seen, the authors themselves feel this, try to apologize if they feel that they deviate from the imagined universally accepted standard. About the peculiarities of the language of electronic discourse asta ryklienė (2000: 101) writes: the speed and unpretentiousness of the technical channel – the Internet – leads to informal and informal, spontaneous and unconsidered writing in short phrases, with corrections, rephrases, ellipses, inversion, abbreviated words, informal vocabulary. in blog texts, too, but in a more moderate way. Another important difference between the language of blogs and electronic discourse is that “online communication is still more viewed by its participants as a process, an event (verbal language), rather than an event, a product (written language)” (ryklienė 2000: 102). The goal of bloggers is to create a ‘product’, i.e. a post on a particular topic that others can read and discuss. This is essentially what leads to a closer relationship between blog texts and written language: on the scale of written and spoken language, electronic discourse is closer to written spoken language, and blogs are closer to traditional written language. but even here the written form allows to act in such a way that the spoken language is not too far away, thus creating the impression of a lively, natural language. The style of blogs is usually close to the journalistic style (except for their own creative texts). Here you can find texts of various genres – from a message or a report, an analytical commentary to a book or concert review (for genres of journalism see bitinienė 2007, Marcinkevičienė 2008). 38 Languages culture | 81 The creation of blogs could be called a kind of language reality show, where everyday tasks are done, everyday thoughts are thought, but all this is presented to the public in the form of notes. In order to create the image of natural writing, it is sometimes preferred to show crossed-out text, which the author has written and deliberately crossed out, as if it were written by hand on paper. Here's a recording by a nineteen-year-old student: 10 Commitments 1. Stop cursing. Although I don’t use profanity online, it happens in reality. Too much, too often. 2. Laziness. Don't be lazy. 3.Study well. Not for grades and scholarship, but for myself. just for the sake of knowledge. 4. Live stylishly, die luxuriously. 5. If possible, use environmentally friendly fuel for your trips. 6. Do not lie, although I try to do so as rarely as possible. 7. Try to see the positive side of everything. […] (hattori) so the blog language is free public usage. Well-known journalist Virginijus Valentinavičius, director of the news portal alfa.lt, relaxed, allowing himself to take off his tie, but maintaining a certain distance from readers, which is determined by the topic being discussed and the unclassified identity of the person (especially the status of the director of the portal), writes about political correctness in his blog [some more interesting elements of the language highlighted by me. – R. M.]: Political correctness: practical-Olympic aspects […] and who allowed footballers to trample on the grass? Oh, who dares to limit themselves to men and not write “who allows footballers to step on the grass”? Ooh - why in parentheses female and not male? Marxism in action means that everything has a material cause and political correctness (PC) is a way of thinking that insists on explaining all those causes. […] A few pages of funny handwritten text in The Spectator that does nothing but consistently apply liberal (in the American sense) ideas to practical matters such as the Olympics. But...but...but...- consistency and logic are the dominance of eurocentric rationalism over primordial irrationality, the repression of community over separation, the dominance of reason over stupidity – eeehm, well, here maybe we should look for another, more PC-like word that eliminates separation. By the way, why is it written black on white, and not vice versa, and how will white, heterosexual, non-transgendered men-Christians and global capitalism be held responsible for this? r. MiluNaItĖ. 39 Well, and the Lithuanian Catholic Church for that matter. And the Polish Church, the only structure of the domination of the Rzeczpospolita. and by the way, why do consonants dominate vowels in Polish? To be continued in all newspapers. In the presented excerpt we can also see questioning sentences typical of oral language, which are intended to create the illusion of a direct conversation with the reader. More than in ordinary written language of insertions (by the way, well, the ironic singular), emoticons (oh, oh-oh, eeehm), repetitions (But... but... but...). There are also spelling methods created to facilitate free written language (to speed up writing itself). In this case, this is shown by the presentation of foreign unchangeable elements in the text (PCeesny, Spectator) so that they would sound as if they were read in natural sentence language, i.e. with endings. Of course, the English quotes (words, compounds and even whole sentences) inserted into the text also catch the eye. in the official spoken or written language, the author could not afford it. 2.2 Relationship with the common language Several degrees are proposed to describe the quality of the common Lithuanian language: 1) poor – with large system errors; 2) satisfactory – without major language errors; 3) good – without higher rates of damage; 4) exemplary (Klimavičius 2002: 23). When studying the language of blogs, the phenomena that function in it can be described according to the agreement or disagreement with the norms of general language, and thus also introduce something similar to such degrees, but the approach to language phenomena here should not be evaluative, but only assertive. in blogs, a person is free to choose the way of speaking (writing) that seems to him the most appropriate in a particular case. Since it is a public domain, but not officially regulated, there is no obligation to adhere to common language norms, let alone any official means to regulate it. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize that it would hardly be appropriate to view the language of blogs as some distorted form of common language or a deviation from the accepted norms of common language. Like electronic discourse, blogs are a kind of medium of language use, in which various variants of language can be expressed. Of course, one of them can be general language, a more free style. The language of this medium, like dialects or social and professional jargon, does not fall within the scope of conscious regulation (codification) of language norms. It is up to each person to decide what language he will use and how he will be influenced by the environment, which can force him to change the ways of linguistic expression (for example, to write in a fluent manner). 40 Languages culture | 81 2.3. Variability and abundance of multi-strain elements One of the most striking things in blog texts is the variety of means of language expression. reflections of such a phenomenon are also present in electronic discourse, only there, due to the shortness of the texts themselves, this is not as evident as in longer recordings. In free verbal language variantity also exists, but due to the nature and fragmentation of the verbal language itself it is much more difficult to record it. so it can be said that in blogs real usage variants function in the most tangible form and scale, which today is not in any other written expression of Lithuanian language. Here is an excerpt from the eighteen-year-old's blog post (emphasis on the relevant variants): Hello, today xlapinux15 and I made a great «love jar». it is very easy to make and quite original gift, so during the next Valentine's Day you can no longer torture and not give everyone bored flowers. First we will need a jar. it is important that it is transparent and with a lid. It can happen that you choose a glass container that will cost more than the candy itself, so be careful. Cheaper (and usually more beautiful) jars are available in the kitchenware shops (in case you are tempted to buy a jar from the same supermarket as candy), and “one euro” shops are a gold mine. We had a half-litre jar, then you will need candy - we bought dragee and gummies, but what you choose here depends on the taste of your second half: [photos illustrating how the gift was created are inserted into the text. – R. M.] I think this is quite a clever idea, obviously not the height of intellect, but I imagine that on some occasion it is much more pleasant to receive a jar of candy than some sweets. or, if the pocket allows, you can give both this and that Although I personally like to give gifts without waiting for occasions (Enorca) in the everyday language of this author, sloikas and kvietkas, probably inherited from parents or grandparents, are used consciously, clearly wanting to enliven the style. Not only the use of individual words varies. the same text can contain both domestic or professional jargon, and even several language insertions, so the linguistic expression becomes very diverse. This long weekend with my wife I went to the seaside, namely to Palanga (i know, that it is not the best resort in Lithuania, but having free accommodation, 15 has in mind the author's friend with such a nickname, which is also a hyperlink to that friend's blog. r. MiluNaItĖ. The first look at the blog language 41 quite matches). As we expected, there were a lot of people, but at least there were only a few stupid animals (I am talking about the marozs and other misunderstandings of nature). It was fun, I drove about 1100 km: Vilnius - Klaipeda - Palanga - in-law - Kaunas - alytus - Vilnius. I feel like I would have had a normal vacation, only the problem is that I can’t recover from work, I can’t get into the rhythm and I always want to sleep. (Povilas) or the recording of a twenty-something student of information technology (underlined hyperlinks): Fight against spam Oh, my God, it's just... it's just... it's just... it's just... it's just... it's just... it's just... In two days, I deleted nothing short of 700 comments and entries in the guestbook from my diary… Polnyj […] [Weak Russian curse omitted. – R. M.]. laimei, I’ve found the solution ; ) And I found it in the Unknown's diary, where he talked about the same problem. and this post was commented by such a Pkmk […] and in that comment he offered to use the services of akismet.com. o tEN I found a link to achingbrain, who (who?) adapted all those tools to PHP5’s. on that occasion I downloaded the tools and adapted them to my diary. :) And here, in an hour already caught 41 comments:) Jeee; ) Finally I can breathe easier and know that in the morning I won't have to scratch all that shit... (~tapkius~) Multilingual elements are typical for blogs of different topics and ages. It may be assumed that authors with more writing skills and higher education try to distinguish foreign elements in some way. for example, the habit of a professional journalist to separate foreign words with quotation marks remains in the blog: Recently, in a private conversation, I heard a snippet of medical black humor. They said that... potential organ donors are "barbers." about it and jokes are created. calls the manager of the ritual services company to the “britvų” store. “How many motorcycles did you sell yesterday?” "Four," the seller answers. "aaa, so we already have three, the fourth, probably, is still running", - summarized the manager. [...] I will try to look at the situation from the side. Because driving technique and culture I know a little bit: I am editor of the wheels section of alfa.lt, I take part in rallies, car test-drives. I’m not a member of any biker club, but I’ve ridden both “britva” and “chiper” on several occasions. (Žilvarskas) foreign elements can be distinguished by italic font [the author’s italic font emphasized by mine. – R. M.]: and even if the final result will not change, those swallow-heads will at least hurt; ) And I'm feeling better on my heart; ) but the most important occasion is that today is exactly a year since I polluted the air here; ) Jo jo, hooray hooray, redVel blog has been online all 365 days 42 Languages culture | 81 […] tries not to display this characteristic, often bringing his comments into the form of irony, jargon or a simple joke. it indicates such traits as sense of humor, ability to adapt to the environment, high communication skills and easy-going chatting. […] The main problem for creating that description remains the same and well known to those who have visited here a few times – I can’t write little. Everything seems important to me. I write shorter only when I don't have time, but I want to say something... But I will do it. Someday; ) […] and pleases and annoys several regular and a dozen random visitors; ) Later I will put such an annual rewiev, but now I don't give me rest this idea; ) (redVel) Elsewhere, as we have already seen from previous examples, foreignness – a word or a combination and a whole sentence – is often inserted into Lithuanian text without any punctuation marks (emphasis is mine everywhere. – R. M.): One of the usability recommendations is to adhere to cultural rules, such as “to the left means counterclockwise”. (Dominykas blew) Anyway, Mr. Donskis was right that we are on the threshold of media change, but I am not so enthusiastic about Lithuanian. (gedzius29) Well, when you get involved in this business on a commercial basis, you have to focus on the fact that the income is stable. (e.f.i.) NO, my mind tells me, and I continue to go back to the accounting theory. Just to let you know, i’m not dead:) (Viktorija) in addition to foreign elements, there are also various manifestations of slang language. If we call jargon the means of language expression typical of certain social groups (mostly youth, students), we will see that in blog posts it is used when the author has chosen the appropriate way of speaking and foresees the appropriate addressee. Some authors do this probably unconsciously, because they do not yet have the skills of public speaking (writing), others specifically seek to identify with a certain group, to “fit” into the language of that group. For example, a student writes: Tomorrow, or more precisely today, there will be a revision session, I will go to the university and do a lot of things there. (Victoria) Similar texts, of course, reduce the readership, because they are not understandable to everyone, but this inherently separates groups of people with certain views and interests. r. MiluNaItĖ. At first glance, in the language of blogs, there are not many such texts in the 43 common stream. For example, in 2005, when Lithuanian blogs began to appear, an author studying telecommunications physics and electronics wrote: C# and garbage collecting I am currently studying.NET/C#, i.e. I want to be a developer on the wave:) Contrary to many, I do not consider Microsoft products evil by default, so I dare to express my opinion only after a little use of the above-mentioned things. .NET framework is a wonderful thing, there is no better - there is almost everything you could need and everything is coordinated with each other. The downside of C++ and the existing frameworks/libs was that you had to mix everything together, and that often didn’t work, for example, with boost::filesystem you run through some directory, write the results to std::vector’s and finally put it into some wx::listbox. There's nothing good about it, by the way. and now about C#. I'm already a science person and so far the closest to my dream language is C++. C# is good because it fixes some of the bad features of C++, but unfortunately, it lacks most of the good features of C++ (C# 2.0 promises to fix that somewhat). and now about one of those things - garbage collecting. (saulius) it is understood that to understand the meaning of such a text can only the same “developers” as the author himself. The study of the variability of blog language and the elements of different origins could help to better understand when the means of expression are used by authors motivatedly, consciously, and when they are established in the usage as competing variants. 2.4. Writing and punctuation in the blog language, as in other expressions of the so-called medialects (see Hjarvard 2004: 75–97), i.e. the language that functions in the electronic medium, the formal differences from the traditional written and printed language are first and foremost striking: various special graphic signs, abbreviations, etc. therefore, the variety of spelling styles is the greatest. You can find texts without Lithuanian letters, there can be both very simplified and almost ideal examples of spelling. Weak spelling skills are clearly visible in many places (out of town, solved, I’m in the ninth heaven), which is undoubtedly further encouraged by the “sweeping” fashion. writing sentences without spaces, separated only by punctuation marks, as usual in short phone messages to save space, in recordings quite rare: yep: Yep, I 44 Languages culture | 81 A couple of days ago I joined the action called What is bad?.What is the purpose of this action?it is very simple - to introduce Lithuanians with such a good as blog, so that later people do not think […] (a person who has something to say) freely treated with real words. Sometimes the more famous names are written in lowercase, and the symbolic names are not distinguished at all: do Microsoft and private equity bosses wonder why adidas does not buy Nike, toyota does not buy Ford, Coca-Cola does not buy Pepsi? Even if the competition authorities allowed it? Because probably the internal confusion, competition and harmonization of product lines, “cadre wars”, dismissals and the departure of the most talented with their ambitions would be the best gift, respectively, for reebok, Volkswagen and… eeee… Švenčionėliai fruit waters. (uniform) punctuation of blog texts is similar to that of electronic discourse (see ryklienė 2000: 102) – relatively loose, often giving the impression of carelessness, with fewer punctuation marks than should necessarily be used in writing in a normative language. but if an author completely ignores the rules of punctuation and writes without commas, he gets the reader’s reaction: such a text is too difficult to read. Emoticons In blog posts, various emotions are expressed both by means of emoticons, which are more typical of electronic discourse16, and by means of emoticons expressed in a traditionally understood verbal form. The variety of such emoticons – both Lithuanian and borrowed, variously processed and probably created right here while writing – is large. Here are just a few examples: eeehm: [...] eeehm, well maybe you should look for another [...] word. et: Et, one day when fate smiles you have to go back there again. grrrrrowl: Grrrrrowl!!! One day dragons will take over the universe and a thousand years of peace will reign. fall into a trance, seeing in front of me a folder with numbers and Excel graphs. muahahaha: To direct the senses to the good things and leave the bad ones for destruction. Muahahaha. 16 The Computer Terms Explanatory Dictionary (KtaŽ) suggests that various graphical symbols for expressing emotions (emoticons) be called emoticons, but in this article (and not only in it) this is not convenient, because the emoticon is used in the meaning of a traditional part of the language. Smileys, smileys, faces, etc. used in the user interface to represent graphical characters are called emoticons in this article.