Mass media language varieties in the context of modern technological culture changes

Abstract

Considering today’s technoculture, overproduction of all symbolic forms and changeable media contexts, it is hard to find a universal criterion used to distinguish between specific forms of media-motivated language. I present the most important findings of Polish scientists researching media linguistics, who wanted to discover general rules of the media use of language and criteria used to differentiate between specific media varieties of language. I discuss approaches assuming the “macro” perspective and searching for very broad categories combining various forms of media use of language. They are for instance the media technology itself (analogue, digital, print media, audiovisual media), message sources (own forms and those distributed through other media, mostly the Internet, certain topics (information, entertainment, education) and genres (established genres, new genres, inter-genre hybrids, senders’ aims, formal situation of media communication (institutional and non-institutional message, political discourses (religious channels, left- and right-wing), ideology of consumerism and its assumptions, tabloidization, institutional and proprietary factors of the media (mostly: public, commercial, private media), pragmatic functions (mostly phatic and persuasive function), styles of messages, and the expected type of sender-recipient interaction (live shows, pre-recorded shows, reactions of the audience invited to the studio) and the target audience (children, adults, including their gender: men, women). The dynamic development of technoculture (e.g. functioning of different media on the Internet, digital and networkrelated, re-mediations of particular technologies and messages), changing ways of receiving media messages (activisation of the audience)and cultural and civilizational contexts are always ahead of accepted theoretical and methodological rules.