MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN COMMUNICATION THROUGH APPLICATIONS
Abstract
The appearance of the Internet and the development of technology have completely changed the patterns of social life, and thus have influenced the modification of language and the way of communication. The use of applications and social networks that have become the most used communication channels, predominantly among the younger population, has contributed to the creation of a completely new language that deviates greatly from the standard, literary language. Initially aimed at reducing the text of the message due to the limited number of characters in the sms, and later due to the speed of writing the message, application users created a new language that is full of abbreviations. Linguists disagree on the impact this new language code has on literacy among young people. However, it is certain that abbreviations are an integral and inevitable part of application interaction. This paper analyzes abbreviations made by native speakers of Spanish, Italian and Serbian. The results showed that application users use abbreviations when interacting online. They also use the same mechanisms to construct abbreviations regardless of their native language. The most common abbreviations include elision, apocope, initials and acronyms, alphanumeric combinations, logograms, paragogue and anglicisms. Common to all abbreviations is that they have undergone some sort of morphological change in regard to the standard language norm. Another common feature is that the abbreviations never interfere with the understanding of the message. What is common to all languages is that abbreviations are often created by the combination of several different mechanisms of construction of abbreviations. In both typologically similar languages (Spanish and Italian) and languages that are not typologically similar (Spanish and Italian compared to Serbian), the principle of making and using abbreviations is the same, and abbreviations in all three languages share similar characteristics that make this phenomenon interlingual and intercultural.
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