Genre Diversity of the Instagram Social Network in a Linguodidactic Perspective

Linguopragmatically, the Instagram social network is a creolized discourse space consisting of a set of blogs with a specific structure. The genre characteristics of these blogs are described in a number of linguistic studies of Instagram discourse. However, the results of these studies have not yet been reflected in the linguodidactic sphere. This makes it difficult to use the genres of Instagram in teaching foreign languages to students of language universities. A good and methodologically correct solution to this problem would make it possible to develop students' skills of communicative self-presentation in the modern multilingual Internet space by creating a public interactive Instagram post. This article attempts to propose a linguodidactic classification of Instagram genres on the basis of the German-language Instagram discourse (German as a foreign language). The proposed classification is based on the assumption that the predominance of creative or genre writing should be considered one of the main criteria for identifying and systematizing the types of written utterances (including creolized ones). As a result, the following genre groups were identified, each of them includes several types of Instagram posts: informational (types: informational analytical; informational entertaining, the latter include Instagram reviews, entertainment news, presentations of entertaining facts), specialized (types: information about facts and events in a certain specialized field; creative presentation of one's own professional activity), lifestyle blogs (types: variable topics of one's daily life; a selected aspect of the author's life), and humorous. Teaching of receptive (analytical reading) and productive (creo-lized writing) activities should be based on informational blogs (training in creating short creolized messages and annotations, Instagram reviews and posts about entertaining facts/events), as well as specialized blogs, namely “creative presentation of professional activities”. This type can be used for teaching students to represent creatively their own educational and professional activities. The rest of the genre groups and types can be used mainly for receptive (analytical) activities. The step-by-step training in creating Instagram posts (from analysis to production and interaction) is based on a special system of tasks, which is described in the article in general terms. This system includes three types of tasks: analytical, productive, interactive.

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