A linguistic study of the website as a polysemiotic hypertext

Stroykov S. A., Nikitina I. N.

The paper provides a comprehensive linguistic study of the website as a polysemiotic hypertext. The main goal of the study is to provide a comprehensive characteristic of the website, which is considered to be a polysemiotic hypertext, from a linguistic point of view. Materials and methods. The main research method in this paper is an analytical and descriptive one, which allowed us to review linguistic references devoted to the study of the website as hypertext, we have also used observation and generalization as auxiliary research methods. Results. Our study has shown that more and more linguistic papers choose a website as a subject of their research, considering it as an electronic hypertext. Scientists study the structure of specific websites, hyperlinks between information units, as well as linguostylistic features of the text component of information units. We have concluded that the website is a polygenre polysemiotic hypertext with an external (hypercarcass) and internal structure (web pages with information units and hyperlinks), integrating components of various semiotic systems (paragraphemic elements): verbal, non-verbal, audio element and animation, which allows a web-site to affect the addressee depending on its purpose.

Keywords:website, hypertext; electronic hypertext; polysemiotic hypertext, complex genre; structural organization.