Iconicity as a way of exchanging scientific and technical information in academic texts in the context of sustainable development of sociolinguistic interactions

¹ Russian University of Transport, Building 9, Obraztsova str., 9, Moscow, GSP-4, 127994, Russia
² Don State Technical University, Gagarina sq., 1, Rostov-on-Don, 344003, Russia

^* Corresponding author: okslet1@mail.ru

Abstract

Nowadays, there is an increasing interest in non-verbal means of written forms of interpersonal communication. It is explained by the fact that the informational component and the pragmatic potential of non-verbal means of communication are often much higher than those of verbal means. As a result, the researchers focus their studies on texts which structural organization contains, in addition to verbal code units, the means of other semiotic codes. Such texts are called creolized or polycode. Polycode texts are a distinctive feature of academic texts, and their interpretation poses certain difficulties for students. The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural components of academic polycode texts; to study the ways of organizing verbal and iconic components; to describe the functional characteristics of iconic elements; to establish the mechanisms of interaction between linguistic and paralinguistic means when creating a single semantic unity of a polycode text. The main research methods are analysis, synthesis, comparison and observation. The textbook for the training of professional engineers Cambridge English for Engineering written by M. Ibbotson is used as the empirical material. The authors come to the following conclusions: there are four types of academic polycode texts; each type has a different pragmatic potential of verbal and iconic parts; in some types, the information function is more prominent in the iconic component; the use of photographs as iconic means facilitates the process of text interpretation and scientific and technical data exchange.