THE STRUCTURE, SEMANTICS AND FUNCTIONS OF BRACKETS AND NUMERALS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MASS-MEDIA COMMUNICATIVE SPACE

Abstract

In this paper, as its title indicates, an analysis is presented of brackets and numerals, two specific non-verbal items in the general category of non-verbal and paraverbal elements which exist in the modern English-language mass media communicative space. By way of background, it could be mentioned that these items have been singled out from the overall category which may be termed "Non-pictographic and non-photographic elements" also includes other punctuation marks, as well as diacritical marks, typographic and other auxiliary signs, mathematical symbols, and abbreviations. As noted above, this study focuses in detail on the specific features of numerals and various types of brackets as integral modes within the media environment. Their semantic and structural features are outlined, their functions are identified, and their role and purpose in the modern English-language mass-media communicative space are substantiated. The customary textual function of parentheses and square brackets as punctuation marks has been to enclose explanatory information regarding the content of the text, or to clarify what is expressed outside the parenthesized text. However, in addition to these features and functions, reference can be made to braces and ‘curly’ and atypical modified (contextually dependent) brackets, which can perform non-traditional functions through differences in size, shape and quantitative composition, being deictic, content-branching, focusing, structuring, and compressive and clarificatory. Our study also demonstrated that in the English-language mass media communicative space, numerals may carry out the function of lexemes, graphemes and morphemes. They can be compressive in that they make it possible to reduce the number of traditional graphic elements that are part of a single lexeme. There are cases where a numeric character can act as a lexeme when used in place of the verbal expression. (This occurs most frequently with the numbers 2 and 4, which can take the place of the verbal units ‘two’, ‘to’, and ‘too’, and of ‘four’, ‘fore’, and ‘for’, as well as of syllables within longer words which contain these phonemes. These functions of these numerals can also be expanded by the use of differing shapes, sizes and colors.