LINGUISTIC CAPACITY AS A FACTOR OF COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE INTERNET SPACE: THE FINDINGS OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

The paper focuses on the potential of linguistic capacity as one of the key adaptive mechanisms of a communicant in the Internet-mediated communication. The methodological platform of the research is the autopoiesis theory developed by Chilean scientists U. Maturana and Fr. Varela which allows to model communication as an interaction between a communicant and his/her niche. It seems that the process of adaptation, its orientation and nature are primarily determined by the adaptive mechanisms that a communicant employs such as linguistic capacity. Receiving stimuli from the niche, a communicant chooses a response strategy in terms of the hierarchy of factors, and then uses one or more adaptive mechanisms to implement it. Linguistic capacity of a communicant plays a significant role both in the process of perception and understanding of the original message, and in the formulation of a response. Within this format, it seems relevant to study the features of communicants' behavior with a certain level of linguistic capacity and identify plausible patterns of their communicative behavior. This paper puts forward a hypothesis about the influence of linguistic capacity on the perception and further communicants' behavior, dwells on an experimental research aimed at identifying the specifics of the influence of linguistic capacity on communicative behavior. The participants of this experimental study are Russian-speaking bilinguals and native English-speakers. The study has unveiled some features of the influence of the level of linguistic capacity on the perception and understanding of the original message as well as the choice of a strategy for a response. The revealed discrepancies appear to be culturally-based which confirms the hypothesis and acts as a basis for further investigation.