ECOLINGUISTIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF MODERN ELECTRONIC BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Background. Electronic business communication is a complex and multifaceted subject for scientific research, since it operates in a specific computer-mediated environment that is characterized by dynamic development. In this regard, there is a need to develop the study of this linguistic phenomenon at the nexus of various scientific paradigms. Human society is continuously evolving and becoming more complex, which directly affects the language that society uses as one of its codes. Due to the improvement of information technologies in modern electronic business interaction, we can register significant changes in the lexical content, clichés typical of the officialese, and features of syntactic constructions. Considering the fact that electronic business communication determines the social and cultural specifics of the modern world business community, it seems relevant to study this form of speech from the ecolinguistic perspective. Purpose. The article deals with the linguistic and style-forming characteristics of modern electronic official business texts from the point of view of the linguo-ecological norm, and also examines the level of language digression in the genre of business e-mails. Materials and methods. The empiric material for the study is represented by a corpus of 70 units of international business e-mails in English, provided by one of the commercial organizations in Belgorod. In the course of the research, a functional-dynamic approach to the object, methods of comparative, stylistic, pragmalinguistic analysis, as well as the method of free associative experiment were applied. Results. The results of the study proved that the computer-mediated environment has a direct impact on the linguistic, structural and style-forming characteristics of official business electronic texts that function in this environment. Conclusion. Business e-mails are marked by certain functional characteristics, stylistic variation and linguistic digression.