Slogan (mottos) in Internet dating profiles as a form of self-presentation and self-advertising on the part of the sender

Abstract

The article encompasses a socio-linguistic analysis of language material – slogans that were obtained from the most popular Internet dating service in Poland ”Sympatia”. As it has been proved by communication practice, when creating short messages with variable power and extent of drawing the receiver’s attention, users of the popular dating service most frequently refer to a few types of speech acts (representatives, directives, commisives, expressives, declarations) and their sequence. Considering the fact that language use always carries some intentions encapsulated in a speech act, the aim of the essay is to distinguish typical functional, semantic and syntactic features in a specific kind of texts, i.e. slogans constituting a part of longer texts - personal profiles created by dating service users. The analytical material (over 400 slogans) was classified (concerning formal-pragmatic criterion) into the following forms: (self) describing and (self) advertising (that inter-textually, connotatively and structurally relate to the advertisement texts). The analysis of the material shows creative peculiarities of slogans presented by users of Internet dating services, multi-variability of their diversity and primary persuasive function, by which a sender wants to get the attention of many receivers. Except the above-mentioned forms, within the texts -slogans, created by the users of an Internet dating service ”Sympatia”, the author’s original classification can be made in regard to the following two criteria: semantic-motivational, connected with controlling the receiver’s reaction and structural-syntactical, meaning slogans - mottos (self)-describing and (self)advertising the user.