Филологические науки/ 7.Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация

Bulatova M.B.

Kostanay State University named after A. Baitursynov, Kazakhstan

Features of web-based mediatext

A text is any media product we wish to examine, whether it is a television program, a book, a poster, a popular song, the latest fashion, etc. We can discuss with students what the type of text is—cartoon, rock video, fairy tale, police drama, etc.—and how it differs from other types of text. We can identify its denotative meaning and discuss such features as narrative structure, how meanings are communicated, values implicit in the text, and connections with other texts. 

The central concept of the model is the idea that all communication, all discourse, is a construct of reality. Every description or representation of the world, fictional or otherwise, is an attempt to describe or define reality, and is in some way a construction—a selection and ordering of details to communicate aspects of the creator's view of reality. There are no neutral, value-free descriptions of reality—in print, in word, in visual form. An understanding of this concept is the starting point for a critical relationship to the media. 

This concept leads to three broad areas within which we can raise questions that will help students to "deconstruct" the media: text, audience and production. more in Representation.

Anyone who receives a media text, whether it is a book read alone or a film viewed in a theatre, is a member of an audience. It is important for children to be able to identify the audience(s) of a text. Texts are frequently designed to produce audiences, which are then sold to advertisers. 

Modern communication theory teaches that audiences "negotiate" meaning. That is to say, each individual reader of a text will draw from its range of possible meanings a particular reading that reflects that individual's gender, race or cultural background, skill in reading, age, etc. Thus the "meaning" of a text is not something determined by critics, teachers or even authors, but is determined in a dynamic and changeable relationship between the reader and the text. The role of the teacher is to assist students in developing skills which will allow them to negotiate active readings—readings which recognize the range of possible meanings in a text, the values and biases implicit in those meanings, and which involve conscious choices rather than the unconscious acceptance of "preferred" readings. Children who can choose meaning are empowered. 

Institution and Production refer to everything that goes into the making of a media text—the technology, the ownership and economics, the institutions involved, the legal issues, the use of common codes and practices, the roles in the production process. Students are often fascinated by the details and "tricks" of production. It is important that the teacher keep in focus the relationship between the various aspects of production, and the other two broad areas of text and audience.

Web-based media as the mass-communication tool organize new requirements of the creation of mediatexts (journalistic, advertising and PR), that do not fit in traditional notions of text. On the one hand, the mediatext is the text that operates in mass communication system and transmitted through a particular media channel. On the other hand, it is " the total product of three subsystems of global mass communication: journalism, PR and advertising, each of which has its own specific characteristics " [1]. Variety of mediatexts’ types, functioning in the Internet, prescribes the necessity not only of the specifics of their content and genre features, but also the development of convergent technologies of creation. This is due to the fact that the various components of media content (journalism, advertising and PR- mediatexts) are incorporated into a single system of online media that focuses on the interests of a specific target audience. The consequence of this association is the set of qualities that are in need of research and development that are acquired by new mediatexts.

The aim of our research - is to develop basic approaches for creation of the cross-functional mediatext based on the theory of creolized text and on determining typological properties of online media (hypertextuality , multimedia and interactivity) in keeping with specifics of the production of journalistic, advertising and PR web-based media texts.

Picture 1 depicts the basic approaches for the creation of the cross-functional mediatext that we have developed. Let’s consider this pattern in details.

Journalistic, advertising and PR- mediatexts consist of different semiotic systems and they are specific linguovisual phenomena, connecting verbal and nonverbal parts, thereby forming a single meaningful unity and provide a comprehensive psychological and informational impact on the target audience.

In theory of modern linguistics these texts were called creolized. By creolized texts are meant texts, "the texture of which consists of two non-homogeneous parts: the verbal (language / speech) and nonverbal (belonging to other symbolic systems, rather than the natural language) " [2, p. 180]. Creolized mediatext can be regarded as a complex entity, including the basic text and other sign systems (graphics, color, sound, audio-visual, etc.) as units of natural language. Taken as a whole functionally and visually it is formed as a unity.

Mediatext is a complex of two symbolic systems - verbal (written language) and nonverbal (belonging to other sign systems), and they form the basic (verbal and nonverbal) approaches for creating a cross-functional text in the Internet and they can be in accord with each other. So, the verbal information of mediatext can be supplemented by non-verbal accompaniment: the visuals, sound, graphics. And this combination of elements and the effects of verbal and nonverbal series due not only to the specific properties, before peculiar to scattered media (radio, TV, press), but also to different conditions of the existence of traditional media in the Internet. These circumstances allow us to consider mediatext in online media as a set of verbal, nonverbal components and acquired special network features.

Consequently, we recognize that the modern web-based mediatext (journalistic, PR and advertising) is creolized and consists of different semiotic systems, including verbal and nonverbal parts. In these circumstances, the use of new information technologies of its creation determines its qualitative change and the acquisition of new properties, such as hypertextuality, multimedia and interactivity. Under the influence of these properties, a modern structure of mediatext changes the structure of the communication model and generates the appearance of new features of communicators.

References:

1. Kazak, M. U. Mediatext: essential and typological properties. – Electronic resource. – URL. http: //www.gmj.sfedu.ru/v2i1/v2i1_kazak.htm

2. Sorokin U.A , Tarasov E. F. Creolized texts and their communicative function. 1990. – 240 p.