Speech Etiquette and Its Psychological Impact on Understanding Internet News

Abstract. The paper is focused on understanding features of Internet news. Among the main methods of analysis applied are descriptive text analysis, linguocultural and concept text analysis, descriptive introspection and modeling, method of semantic and pragmatic interpretations, contextual observation. The author emphasizes that specific characteristics of Internet news should be considered in studying their understanding process. Internet news differ from print news by lack of censorship, weak dependence on the publication format, hypertext, interactivity, electronic form that allow simplifying the printing process, saving time, collective authorship, the possibility of archiving and electronic search, the possibility of permanent access from anywhere in the world, multimedia, unlimited print run and low cost, fragmentation. These new technical features  create the potential for introducing various communicative phenomena, in particular personalization, violation of linguistic rules, simplification, use of jargon, invectives and terms that forms a specific Internet news speech etiquette. Verbs in the third form of a plural, often not calling the subject of action, or calling it only formally, i.e. as a metonymy (for example: “power”) or as a name without referent, are typical for Internet news etiquette. Such speech etiquette of the Internet news significantly complicates their content understanding. Besides same values, attitudes and pattern are imposed on readers using confusing utterances. Psychological features of the  Internet news’ speech etiquette impact on understanding are represented in the text understanding model proposed in this article.