Attitudes Toward Ethical and Communicative Norms in Student Group Chats: Findings from a Sociolinguistic Survey

The aim of this article is to analyze the characteristics of the transformation of ethical and communicative norms within the genre of student group chats. The empirical basis for the study consists of data collected from a sociolinguistic survey conducted in November-December 2024 using Google Forms, comprising five sections and thirty questions. A total of 95 students from creative disciplines participated in the survey, divided into two age groups: 1) 17 to 21 years old (89.47%); 2) 22 years and older (10.53%). The focus of the research is on the materials from the first two sections of the questionnaire, which characterize respondents’ attitudes toward ethical and communicative norms in the Russian. The findings indicate that contemporary chat communication reveals several new trends, particularly a neutral and positive attitude towards the absence of greetings and phrases such as “Thank you in advance” and “I hear you.” It was found that politeness towards the recipient remains a leading communicative-ethical value; however, not all respondents distinguish between neutral (sincere politeness) and ironic (deliberate politeness) undertones, which may lead to communicative failures. Additionally, it was noted that within the student community, the adherence to written speech norms varies depending on the level of formality in the conversation. A trend towards differentiating between business and personal communicative spaces was also identified.

sociolinguistic survey, ethical norms, communicative norms, group chat communication, communicative strategies