Blog as a Genre of Speech – Evolution of Epistolary Genre

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20^th century Internet communication has been playing a big role in socio-cultural life of the Ukrainians. The development of virtual space influence upon web-sites, services and platforms, where the blogosphere (an array of blogs, communities and social media) is functioning. The blogosphere is a specific personality-oriented zone of the Internet communications, which forms a certain subculture and is used for interaction of users. The article touches upon the studying of the evolution of the genre of a diary from the «classical» one to the virtual blog. The genre of blog is analyzed and its epistolary origin is proved. The peculiarities of both the «classical diary» and the blog are studied as well. The attention is also paid to the features of a «classical diary» in blog. It is noticed that the diary genre was changed during its evolution, but nevertheless the main features of it remained the same. It is proved that the type of the addressee has undergone the biggest changes, the relations between the author and the reader have also changed. The main differences between the blog and the «classical diary» are the next: publicity, communication with adherents and responsibility for the text, which was given to the public. The application of the genre classification, created by T. Shmeliova, gave a possibility to study the features of a «classical diary» in blog. The communicative purposes, the images of the author and the addressee, of the past and the future, types of dictum content and the linguistic embodiment in these two genres were compared. It is clarified that the communicative space of the Internet changes the components of genre structure of a «classical diary», modifies and develops it according to the necessities of modern society. Being a «successor» of the «classical diary» the blog has another communicative purpose what in general leads to the evolution of the epistolary genre.