Kazyaba V.V. Graphic Models of Nicknames in the German-Speaking Internet-Space
http://dx.doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu2.2015.5.8
Viktoriya Viktorovna Kazyaba
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of General and Germanic Linguistics, Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )
Abstract. The object of the study is a specific anthroponymic element of the onomastic system in German – the network name (nickname) and its representation in the German section of the Internet. Being a unit of the informal secondary artificial nomination in computer-mediated communication, this anthroponym performs the most essential function – self-nomination of virtual personality. Graphical means of nickname-creation serve as a research subject in the article. The data under analysis are the nicknames and the attendant personal data of Germanspeaking users of such Internet-services like Twitter, ICQ, Facebook, Flickr, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft. It was found that the graphical elements of the nickname-composition realize informative, play-involving, emotional and aesthetic functions, because they provide additional information about the communicants, form their speech masks. The following graphic models of nicknames are revealed and described in the article: 1)the nicknames based on numerals and theirs meanings, 2) the nicknames based on signs capitalization, 3) the nicknames with emoticon-smiles, 4) the nicknames constructed with iteration, 5) the nicknames based on «leetspeak», 6) the nicknames based on using of different alphabet signs. The research proves, that the nicknames of the German-speaking Internetusers represent, as a rule, variations of signs from different models.
Key words: anthroponym, nickname, self-nomination, Internet-communication, graphical model, paraverbal means.
Citation. Kazyaba V.V. Graphic Models of Nicknames in the German-Speaking Internet-Space. Science Journal of Volgograd State University. Linguistics, 2015, no. 5 (29), pp. 76-81. (in Russian). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu2.2015.5.8.
Graphic Models of Nicknames in the German-Speaking Internet-Space by Kazyaba V.V. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.