Social transformations of speech culture in information age

Abstract

The paper looks at the major technological, sociocultural and linguistic factors that are changing the nature of interpersonal communication in the Information Age, and some manifestations of these changes. Rapid progress of technology, above all, the advent of the Internet, brought about dramatic changes in the modes and parameters of human communication over the recent decades. New types of written communication arose and have firmly established themselves on the global scale – in social networks, chats, blogs, forums and various Internet communities. Having created unprecedented possibilities for connecting with people irrespective of their location, age or social status, innovative technology is at the same time challenging standards of communication ethics and speech culture. Sociocultural transformations in the modern society, democratization of social relations contribute to weakening of speech norms and deterioration of overall speech culture, especially among young people. The increasing role of English as a language of global communication and its reputation of the dominant language of new technology and virtual reality are inevitably influencing speech habits of the Internet users across the globe. The combined work of all these factors results in visible deterioration of speech culture, standardization and simplification of speech, elimination of cultural specificity, tendency to replace expressive language means with emoji, downgrading of style, defying norms of spelling, word use and grammar. Obvious irreversibility of technological progress and the growing share of life people spend online call on specialists from various related fields to continue comprehensive analysis of transformations of speech culture in the modern world with the aim to assess societal risks and work out timely and adequate countermeasures.