New forms of precedent text in modern internet communication

The article examines the phenomenon of precedence in modern communication conditions, among the characteristics of which the authors note “text violence” as a process of perception and interpretation of information in the absence of the recipient’s conscious intention and need to perceive the content of the text. It is noted that within the framework of Internet communication, individual “text violence” is one of the sources of precedence. Thus, Internet communication is considered as a source of new precedent texts and as a tool for their forced introduction into the consciousness of communicants. The authors distinguish three levels of precedence: auto-precedent, social-precedent and national-precedent levels. As a precedent text, this article examines the erratives included in memes and, therefore, they have become widespread and entrenched in the speech of communicants. The authors classify erratives of this kind as a group of precedent erratives, while the second group consists of occasional erratives generated by the user directly during a communicative act. In order to identify the images generated in the minds of recipients when perceiving errative units used in precedent Internet texts, the authors conducted an associative experiment. A quantitative analysis of the experimental material demonstrates that most of the subjects are not only familiar with the precedent memes proposed to them, but also understand them in the form of erratives, offering their own interpretation. Only a small part of the participants made an attempt to edit the erratives according to the norms of the Russian language. Qualitative analysis of reactions obtained during free associative experiment allowed the authors to divide the resulting reactions into two groups: “acceptance” and “non-acceptance” by the communicants of errative precedent texts. In conclusion, it is stated that the errativization of modern communication and the acquisition of the status of precedent text by erratives through their popularization is an ongoing process.