Today, the Internet is not only a way to transfer data, as it was conceived when inventing it, but it is also one of the most important tools for orienting a person in the world and allows him or her to meet the constantly accelerating pace of life. On the Web, people are looking for useful information, a life partner, a travel companion for vacation travel, make purchases, work, establish business contacts, become famous, communicate according to interests, etc. Such a greater involvement of a person in the world of network interaction cannot but arouse interest researchers of various fields of knowledge, including linguists. The Internet is not only a new communication channel that mediates communication with electronic signals but also a new sociocultural environment that leaves its mark on all aspects of communication, including language, which is the main means of communication, an instrument for expressing thoughts and feelings.
Summary
The given article tries to explain the internet communication phenomenon as a representation of communities by using Twitter as an example platform. Language, as a general and abstract phenomenon, manifests itself through various types and acts of its use in particular situations, that is, through speech (Gruzd, Wellman & Takhteyev 2011). The kinds of speech, as shown by the studies of many scientists working in this field, are very diverse, but reducible to two main forms – oral and written, which are in a complex unity and occupy the same place in social and speech practice (Gruzd, Wellman & Takhteyev 2011). Despite the fact that verbal communication is a complex unity of these two forms, each of them is independent and has individual characteristics and features. First of all, the difference between the oral and written forms of speech is manifested in the presence in each of them of their material basis, a specific type of being. Verbal expression is sounding speech, functioning in the sphere of direct communication.
The authors agree that both language and online communities are primary elements of the technology-enhanced society. It is the form of the existence of speech that attracts attention in the process of communication via the Internet since all replicas of communicants are recorded in graphical form, that is, they are written (Scollon, Scollon & Jones 2011). This fact leads to the fact that correspondents of various online publications, as well as active Internet users, arguing with opponents of excessive enthusiasm for this type of communication, call the revival of the epistolary genre one of the advantages of network communication and, therefore, the need for communicants to clearly and clearly state their thoughts when using written speech (Scollon, Scollon & Jones 2011). However, linguists do not share this point of view, since the oral and written forms of expression are distinguished not only by the criterion for the presence of various material foundations but also by their different nature associated with specific mechanisms of implementation and operating conditions.
Multiculturalism allows for preserving socio-ethnic differences and blocks assimilation. In the last decade, migration to Europe is more than 2 million people annually, however, the problem is not in quantity (Awada & Colon 2019). In modern communication, the concept of the assimilation of minorities has become untenable – the primary condition for recipient countries to agree to migration in principle. The contradiction in intentions: the strategic orientation towards the complete assimilation of minorities according to the melting pot model, as in the USA, and tactical agreement with the multiculturalism policy as the most hassle-free way for minorities to coexist, can be transformed into conflict (Gruzd, Wellman & Takhteyev 2011). In other words, the progress is observed not only concerning the concept of multiculturalism but also in general about the cultural identity of society. Thus, authors try to explain that online communities possess shared emotional adherence to the group.
One of the key reasons leading to this situation is technological innovation. Modern communication technologies create a network society with several qualitatively new social characteristics. Digital communications, due to their informational power and virtual figurative power, reproduce the surrogates of the socialization environment and thereby compensate for a significant part of the changes in the cultural climate that usually force the migrant to adapt to the new environment and assimilation. Satellite TV channels, print-on-demand, the Internet, transport, and public associations easily create a spiritual environment for an educated urban migrant with whom he or she has always dealt. Preserving the subculture in the family, he or she recreate it within the framework of communal life in urban neighborhoods (Vezzali, Crisp, Stathi & Giovannini 2014). Culture receives a format of network relations, which allows a person to support himself or herself in how many pleasing the number of remote cells. In this format, a person copes with the task of ethnic and other forms of identity.
Critical Review
In the first two weeks, we learned that both intercultural communication and the concept of culture play a significant role in establishing the barrierless flow of information between representatives of different cultural backgrounds. The traditional social theory proceeds from the fact that a single society is characterized by a unique culture. If this is so and globalization contributes to this process, then people are waiting for the collapse of national-state life. Moreover, the picture reproducing the landscape of interethnic interactions within the country should be superimposed on the map multiplying interethnic relations between countries and regions.
The first week’s article discusses the increasing complexity of cultural and political relations caused by migration processes is due to the interaction of the two principles. One of them has the property of rigid stability, the other – mobile mobility (Scollon, Scollon & Jones 2011). The first is based on the fact that ethnocultural identity is based on its linguistic uniqueness, accompanied by a complex of historical and religious markers, symbols, traditions (Awada & Colon 2019). The second is rooted in the fact that the stability of the basic core of culture is due to its ability to interpret and arbitrarily flexible and mobile transform the external symbolic environment.
The second week’s reading addresses the fact that the rigidity of the linguistic framework of any culture provides it with phenomenal stability, supporting the life of characters that are held only by a sociohistorical memory and are always at risk of oblivion. Each language unfolds in a complex of aspects of a socially-identifying nature (Blommaert 2013). Cultural frameworks and behavioral traditions under the conditions of technical and economic modernization show excellent mobility, but one can hardly speak of secularization as the dominant trend among migrants from Muslim countries (Blommaert 2013). Cultural symbols and markers for participants in the lifeworld are prerequisites for communication, which in their totality are not called into question and are not subject to criticism, or are quasi-transcendental.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the information-equipped minority, finding themselves in an alien environment and facing new challenges, does not just passively preserve its subculture. It becomes so confident in itself, especially in the second, third, and subsequent generations of migrants, that it boldly engages in dialogue and even in the struggle for its values. Feeling their native culture under a barrage of cultural criticism, minorities begin to defend it actively and criticize the culture of the recipient. The struggle of perceptions, previously only remote and abstract, is being actualized in the center of European cities. Moreover, without full socialization, the culture of national minorities is deformed, highlighting religious and ethnic accents. This is not a confrontation of communities, but a conflict of principles.
Reference List
Awada, G & Colon, MG 2019, ‘Effect of cooperative learning instruction and blogs on apprehension of intercultural communication’, Journal of Educational Technology Systems, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 72-96.
Blommaert, J 2013, ‘Citizenship, language, and superdiversity: Towards complexity’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 193-196.
Gruzd, A, Wellman, B & Takhteyev, Y 2011, ‘Imagining Twitter as an imagined community’, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 55, no. 10, pp. 1294-1318.
Scollon, R, Scollon, S & Jones, RH 2011, ‘Intercultural communication: A discourse approach’, Oxford: Blackwell, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-24.
Vezzali, L, Crisp, RJ, Stathi, S & Giovannini, D 2014, ‘Imagined intergroup contact facilitates intercultural communication for college students on academic exchange programs’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 66-75.