Transformation of narrative tactics in Russian and English fiction during the digital age

Abstract

The digital revolution of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has fundamentally reshaped the field of literature. This article examines how world and Russian-language fiction has changed between 1980 and 2024 to adapt, using the mechanism of remediation, to the conditions of digital reality. The analysis traces the evolution of narrative structures from hypertext experiments to imitations of chats and news feeds, as well as the transformation of the literary character from the romanticized cyberpunk hacker to the depressed “digital nomad” and the post-human with an “external soul” stored in a smartphone. Particular attention is paid to linguistic mutations and specific narrative tactics, including the incorporation of Netspeak (abbreviations, lowercase writing without punctuation), the use of emojis as illocutionary markers and syntactic substitutions, and visual syntax (such as line breaks that mimic message delivery in instant messaging). The findings show that the hybridization of spoken and written language has modified the rhythmic and syntactic organization of literary texts, as illustrated by the examples from contemporary novels, and suggest that literature, by mastering the logic of digital media, retains its key anthropological function, which consists in searching for what makes us human and for the meaning of life behind the mask of the avatar.