Evolution of Concept VIRTUAL PERSONALITY in Digital Age (a Sociolinguistic Study based on Russian Texts)

• Published in: Nauc̆nyj dialog (Online) Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 151 - 169
• Main Author: Marinova, E. V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tsentr nauchnykh i obrazovatelnykh proektov 07.02.2023
• Subjects: concept evolution; digital personality; dual world vocabulary; semantic structure of the term; the language of the digital society; virtual personality
• ISSN: 2225-756X; 2227-1295; 2227-1295
• DOI: 10.24224/2227-1295-2023-12-1-151-169

The evolution of the concept of “virtual personality” relevant for the digital age (from diffuse to terminological) is considered. The means of its expression are analyzed. Research sources: personal websites and blogs of contemporary Russian authors, prose and philosophical texts. Electronic search databases were also involved: Russian National Corpus, the media bank “Integrum”. The objectives of the study are to define and describe the semantic structure of the term virtual personality ; identify semantic connections with related nominations (network personality, digital personality; real personality); to establish possible transformations of the concept of “personality” in the digital age. The study was carried out using the methods of cognitive science and functional sociolinguistics. As a result: a model of a dictionary entry for the term virtual personality is presented (for the forthcoming dictionary of digital society terms). For the first time, a comparative analysis of the concepts of “virtual personality” and “digital personality” was carried out according to such criteria as intentional / unintentional, activity / passivity, subject / object of influence, presence / absence of (relative) freedom. A conclusion is proposed about the expansion of the semantics of the word personality in the context of digital technologies of the information society due to a new lexical-semantic variant: ‘a set of user data presented on the Web in digital format; digital footprint.