Creolised Text in Mass Media: Principles of Effective Decoding

Abstract

Arising and active development of innovative information channels, forming net thinking, require non-standard forms of presenting material in mass media. One of the solutions to this problem is increasing the number of creolised texts not only in electronic, but in printed media as well. Such texts containing verbal (heading, subscript, text comprising of more than one sentence) and non-verbal (image, scheme, table, font, colour) parts are widely spread in mass media because they allow the reader to precisely understand the author’s intention and the intention can be expressed in an implicit way. Such texts correspond to mass communication general trends towards information visualization, raising the effectiveness of the text impact on audience thanks to double coding, compact presentation of the material. These are the reasons of growing scientific interest in creolized texts in psychology, literature studies, linguistics, journalism. However, the terminology of the scientific sphere is not conventional: different terms “creolized text”, “semantically complicated text”, “polycode text”, etc. are all used in similar meanings in scientific papers. The authors of the article characterize terms used in Russian and foreign articles and monographs, assess their frequency and semantic scope. The specific features of creolized texts are pointed out, different types of such texts depending on metagraphic and iconic sign systems included in them are described. We distinguish three phases in reading such texts (preliminary stage, organised perception, final stage) and the role of visual and verbal components in the process. By the example of caricatures we show the importance of background knowledge for adequate decoding of creolized texts. Linguistic and cultural universals are an optimal source of objects whose meaning is evident to the representative of a certain culture. This makes the creolized text decoding easier in linguistic culture of its origin. On the other hand, texts based on linguistic and cultural universalia (realia, idioms, homophones, homographs, etc.) present extra difficulties for non-natives. The material of the research is caricatures of the late 20th — early 21st centuries by A.Merinov. Each of the caricatures is based on a certain linguistic and cultural universal.