Abstract:

The article highlights the problem of visual and linguistic expression of the individual’s self-awareness in the media discourse space based on examples of the Bulgarian, Russian and English contemporary media and examines their impact on the development of self-consciousness of the younger generation.

The existence of a modern person is very closely bound with the world of information technologies, new media resources and virtual space. Therefore, his consciousness can't but be formed under the influence of the media discourse space in which he stays on a round-the-clock basis.

The media discourse of the new millennium is an open, independently functioning transnational information environment in which synchronously there is a multiple interaction between senders and recipients of media messages in the spontaneous and dramatized mode. From our viewpoint, today’s media discourse environment with its information resources is the multi-level phenomenon dominating at all steps of modern society, thereby forming a media discourse as a new picture of the person’s world. The media discourse space exerts a direct impact on the development of the individual’s consciousness, shaping people’s cognitive, emotional-value and semantic attributes.

The Russian psychologist A.N. Leontiev once claimed that each person during his individual development through language acquisition obtains consciousness, and only thanks to it his self-consciousness is formed [1]. We support A.N. Leontiev’s idea and consider a linguistic aspect of consciousness formation of the human being as his important component. Moreover, this element is especially valuable in modern social conditions of the person, especially a young person in the media discourse space.

Another important factor which affects young individual’s self-consciousness in the new media discourse environment is the visual image of the media content. In our opinion, it plays a significant role in human activities and it is indispensable where it is necessary to convey to other people any ideas in such a way that they can quickly understand and accept them.

Therefore, the purpose of our research is to analyze visual and linguistic components of young people’s self-consciousness development in the new media discourse space and to perceive how they influence the young audience at the present moment. In order to achieve our goal a number of special surveys were conducted among Russian and Bulgarian students. For example, a free associative and graphic experiment was conducted in our study, which made it possible to distinguish groups of associates with the word "new media" that are used in everyday human communication and reflect a world picture conditioned by the specifics of Bulgarian, English and Russian languages and their culture. We also managed to identify key linguistic dichotomy "traditional" vs. "cosmopolitan" in the ways of representing the notion of self-awareness in the modern media which impacts on the students’ self-consciousness and define their further psychological development.

References:
[1] N. Guslyakova, Psychological mechanisms of the formation and development of pedagogical university students’ professional consciousness. Chelyabinsk: Izdatel’stvo CSPU. 2006.

Keywords:

Young individual’s self-consciousness, visual thinking, linguistic attributes, media discourse space, traditional, corporation, cosmopolitan, globalization.