Kaptiurova V. Pragmatic Principles of Social Networking and Microblogging (Based on English).

The thesis deals with the issue of computer-mediated communication considering numerous aspects of social networking and microblogging. Virtual discourse study has become a contemporary field of scientific interest that is aimed at the analysis of changing tools and patterns of social interaction, communicators' language preferences, computer slang interference and language development. The thesis is devoted to the description of the features of Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr and Twitter messages considering participants' lexical, grammar and stylistic preferences. Against the background of general characteristics of e-discourse the microblog Twitter, along with the other analysed subgenres, creates relatively natural conditions for communication as it provides compact and prompt data processing. The study establishes the place of social networks and microblogs in the genre system and reasons the ability to single them out as separate genres. In the thesis, pragmatic principles are defined as premises of communication, interaction constituents, discursive features and text's/author's pragmatic aims. According to the study, the major pragmatic principles of social networking and microblogging to be outlined are the following: the economy principle, the language game principle, the topicality principle, the attractivity principle, the principle of face-to-face communication imitation, the multi-vector communication principle, the possible anonymity principle and the affiliation principle.