2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
The article is devoted to one of the key directions in the development of modern media linguistics — criticism of the media language. The author’s goal is to systematize already established ideas about this area of scientific knowledge (understanding of the object, subject of media criticism, and the criteria for evaluating media speech and media text). The speech situation in the modern Russian media space is steadily becoming more complex. One of the most obvious manifestations of this complication is a change in the perception of the subject of media criticism. Today, the criticism of the media language is developing in several directions: internal (journalists evaluate the media language in various types of publications); “civil” (ordinary readers and representatives of state authorities try to regulate the speech behavior of media people in accordance with their own vision); finally, as philological (linguistic). The dominance of linguists in this segment of scientific discourse can only be associated with a productive dialogue with the creators and consumers of media texts. The objective basis for this dialogue is the development of a system of linguistic and praxiological normalization. The task of scientists is to capture productive trends in the development of media speech, identify them, and use them in the modernization of praxiological norms regulating the use of language in the media. For this purpose, the criticism of media speech should be regarded as a scientific discipline, which is possible only when updating the baggage of linguistic knowledge that has already been accumulated in the system of subdisciplines that precede its appearance: rhetoric and speech culture, literary editing, and linguistic expertise. Each of these subdisciplines already has its own way of evaluating speech behavior and speech activity in the media. Based on the achievements of these subdisciplines, the author formulates four main criteria for evaluating the media speech: effectiveness, correctness, aesthetics, and ethics. The author connects the research perspective with the systematization of the revealed trends and the conceptual understanding of the results.
Keywords: criticism of media language, norm, object, perspective, principle, subject, критика медиаречи, норма, объект, перспектива, принцип, субъект
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
The article analyzes one of the aspects of contemporary media-text — the author’s linguistic reflection. Using the material of the magazine “Ogonek” 1916–2019, the author explores the use of the constructions “I apologize for…” and “sorry for…” as reflexives or forms of admission of “speech guilt”. The author establishes that the linguistic-ethical reflection is not typical for Soviet journalistic texts. Activation of this method occurs in the post-Soviet period and reaches a peak frequency in the late 1990s — early 2000s. These indicators confirm the thesis of specialists in linguistic ecology concerning the growing public disharmony of verbal Russian communication in the beginning of the XXI century. The author conducts a classification of reflexives on several criteria: location in the text (in the monologue of a journalist, an expert, in replicas of the interviewer and the interviewed person, and in the open letter published by a magazine), the degree of complexity, the subject of reflection, and the pragmatic attitude. The author of the article demonstrates the difference between simple and analytical reflexives and identifies the most important objects of speech self-criticism, such as obscenity, vulgarity, slang, harsh tone, triviality, pathos, puns, tautology, verbal inaccuracy or a slip of the tongue. The article notes that the author’s linguistic self-criticism in the media text can serve as a means of removing speech aggression and contribute to the harmonization of communication between the journalist and the audience. There are also frequent cases of ironic use of speech formulas containing a pseudo-apology for what was said. Common to both applications of reflexives is that they perform a function of raising the level of dialogue in media text, specify its target, activate the potential addressee, and include the audience into media communication space. The author notes the importance of further study of the content and forms of ethical language reflection in the framework of modern media linguistics.
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
The article discusses groups of subjects of media speech criticism of the Irkutsk writers organization’s newspaper “Literary Irkutsk” of the late 80s — early 90s in the twentieth century. It is proposed to classify writers, poets, and playwrights as subjects of criticism of media speech, along with representatives of the academic sphere, employees of media organizations, and public activists. The expansion of the group of critics of media speech is justified by multiple objective and subjective reasons. Groups of media speech critics are structured into two communities — professional and non-professional communicators. The main areas of criticism of media speech in the corporate publications are identified. It has been established that effective aspects of publications (media rhetoric) are relevant if they criticize excessive or insufficient expression of texts, rhetorical arguments of logos and pathos, unfair work with illustrative and factual material, and manipulative tactics. The criticism of media speech acquires a resource and situational-speech perspective (stylistics of media speech) while analyzing stylistic violations in the media, analyzing extralinguistic factors that influenced the individual style of media authors, and when describing ideological prohibitions on the stylistic use of language options. Linguistic-legal and linguistic-ethical aspects of criticism (linguoconflictology) involve an analysis of the speech “abuses” of media from the standpoint of ethics and law. The specificity of the inclusion of critical comments of various sizes in different structural and compositional parts of the materials of “Literary Irkutsk” is shown. Three methods are presented — “point”, “fragmentary”, and “text” — the introduction of media speech criticism into problematic articles, op-ed articles, readers’ letters, rebuttals, and commentary from “Literary Irkutsk”.
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
This article is devoted to an important feature of modern Internet discourse — the ability to create favorable conditions for the development of a comical beginning. The comic contradiction is picked up, replicated, and paradoxically rethought, which leads to the appearance of memes in network communication. The starting point in the study is an analysis of the mechanisms for the formation of Internet memes, but the main subject of the study is a wider and more complex phenomenon that can simultaneously generate and use other, smaller and/or less significant units of media communication — memes and hashtags. The authors introduce the concept of socio-formula and analyze it using the example of the I/WE phenomenon and determine the place of this new phenomenon in the paradigm of network communication units. The method of discourse-analysis helps to establish that the socio-formula I/WE has a serious impact on public consciousness and audience behavior, it becomes a manifestation of the media semantics of solidarity, a “friend or foe” marker, a value imperative, and it has the ability to direct the thinking and behavior of the audience. The authors of the article aim to demonstrate, by the example of the “chronicle of one carnival,” how the comical manifests itself in a new mediatized society, how paradoxical rethinking leads to the fact that the influential and popular socio-formula I/WE, from the marker of consolidation and the sign of an open society, turns into a meme in front of the audience’s eyes. But, unlike the meme, which is primarily understood as a kind of networked humor, the socio-formula illustrates the ability to return to the original function, and this key feature allows us to talk about the emergence of a new significant unit of media communication.
Keywords: carnival, comic, I/WE, meme, socio-formula, the network communication, карнавал, комическое, мем, сетевая коммуникация, социоформула, Я/МЫ
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
The article discusses the entertainment strategies used in presenting the art of cinema on the pages of print media. Entertaining strategies in the conditions of the dominance of the processes of secularization become an important part of journalism in general, film criticism in particular. Attention is focused on increasing the hedonistic potential of the media, under the influence of technologies and the diminution of the ideas of anthropocentrism. The time of the development of cinema as a new kind of spectacle fell on the fin de siècle period in which the idea of humanity was questioned. Simultaneously with the development of cinema, the media practice about the presentation of “ubiquitous cinema” began to develop in newspapers and magazines. The article defines the different stages of the formation of film-critical creativity, in which the intensification of socio-cultural transformations, instead of analytical approaches, entertaining strategies began to be introduced. Author’s approaches, involving the discovery and presentation of artistically important meanings, began to be replaced by the expression of subjective representations. The fin de siècle period was repeated at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries — the era of glam culture with the ideological and aesthetic dominant of the glamorous world, when everything began to be seen in the rays of “glossy brilliance”, embellishment, and the replacement of traditional values with simulacra. The dominance of entertainment strategies in different types of the print media segment has led to the replacement of film criticism by film journalism, the main differences between which are in the field of author-editorial goal-setting. The use of certain communicative practices in modern cinema discourse, for the achievement of hedonistic goals, reveals a substitution of meanings, an excessive presentation of the author’s “I”, and a violation of ethical standards.
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
The article, based on texts created within the framework of the discourse of journalistic investigation and which became the subject of legal proceedings, analyses the methods of organizingand processing socially significant information: facts, opinions, and value judgments. The article also considers the ability to withdraw media texts containing facts and opinions from the zone of legal risk. Emphasis is given to a particular type of information ‒ information of a generalizing type, often perceived by readers and experts as information about facts, but essentially representing a journalist’s final opinion that is formed on an analysis of the total data studied in a journalistic investigation on information concerning the typical activities of a person or organization. The article is based on the research of modern legal linguistics, media linguistics, and stylistics of a text. The status of generalizing information is substantiated and ways of transforming factual information into generalizing information are revealed. Based on a comprehensive stylistic analysis of newspaper texts in the genre of journalistic investigation, two methods of transforming socially significant information (various combinations of facts, opinions, and value judgments) are identified. The first method is the translation of factual information gathered by a journalist from various sources into generalizing information that is verbalized in the final text (transformation model: fact — author’s generalized opinion based on the facts studied). The second method allows for transforming information on facts and evaluative statements of a single informant into a hypothetical generalized opinion, which readers should form after familiarizing themselves with the publication (transformation model: fact — a generalizing opinion (assessment) of the author is absent in the text, but it is implied).
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
In modern media, proper names and their derivatives are characterized by a high occurrence. The occasional transformations of anthroponyms registered in the Bulgarian media and social networks have a distinctive emotionally-expressive evaluation. The newlyformed units retain the nominative character of the proper name, which designates a real person, but add to it a variety of evaluative components related to expressing personal assessment with concrete manifestations of friendliness or antipathy towards a given person and their behavior, activities, qualities, etc. Their creation is situationally or contextually determined, which is why their understanding requires knowledge about an actual extralinguistic situation, against which it would be possible to assess their emotional-expressive impact. Anthroponyms are transformed on the basis of homonymic and paronymic relations with other lexical units, as a result of which they receive a new internal form. The underlining of offensive or obscene words allows us to regard them as invective lexis. The most offensive are occasionalisms, in which obscene lexis is found as a structural component, as well as other units with a pejorative or otherwise negative connotation, including zoo and phytometaphors. These offensive qualifications are indirect in character since they are expressed by people, often anonymously. Every transformation is motivated by particular events in which a given person is an active side (an active participant). The most common ways of transforming anthroponyms are shown, among which are contamination and graphic word formation. Also, certain characteristics of lexis are revealed, with which they have close relations. The observation of occasional anthroponyms, which, to a different extent, lower someone’s reputation, provides important information about public attitudes and opinions reflected in them.
2020
№ 3
(Vol. 7)
Specialized media have not been extensively researched to date with reference to Polish linguistics. However, they deserve a closer analysis due to their popularity and genre diversity. The aim of this article is to show the genre uniqueness of Polish media addressed to computer game enthusiasts. The author presents the types of speech from two perspectives. The immanent point of view draws attention to the genre pattern itself: its basic components (cognitive, pragmatic, compositional, and stylistic), the relationships between them, as well as the ways in which the patterns are produced in text. The discursive point of view highlights the extralinguistic conditions of the pattern, such as cultural, social, or commercial influences. Four Polish Internet portals (GRYOnline.pl, Eurogamer.pl, Gram.pl, Polygamia.pl) and two printed magazines (“CD-Action”, “Pixel”) were analysed. The genres of speech can be divided into four main groups: with the dominant ones being informational, evaluative, educational, and entertaining. The article presents the characteristics of examples that are representative of each group: game review, “production” message, pre-review report, handbook, and overview. These genre patterns and their textual concretizations differ in multiple ways from those in the general media and in other segments of specialized media; they can be considered as new speech genres, a modification or contamination of traditional types. They can also be seen as implementation templates of traditional genres that are characteristic of this sphere. The article also describes how the repertoire, form and content of genres are affected by extralinguistic factors related to games (location of games between the spheres of culture and technology, complexity of games), their production and sale (timeline for the appearance of games and their need for promotion), the context of the Polish gaming market (distance from the largest producers), and the target audience (a digital native who is focused on easy to discern information and seeks interaction and entertainment).
Keywords: computer game, genre of speech, media, Poland, жанры речи, компьютерная игра, медиа, Польша