Emotional and Expressive Connotation of Regional Media Vocabulary

Abstract

This article focuses on the peculiarities of emotional and expressive aspects of the regional media vocabulary (Ulyanovsk region newsportals). The authors analyzed publications from the leading sites of Ulyanovsk newsportals – ulpravda.ru, ulgrad.ru, ultoday73.ru, and ulpressa.ru from July 2020 to January 2021. The authors examined the regional broadcasting language, characteristics of printed media and lexical connotation of provincial publications. To study the emotional and expressive peculiarities of the regional newspapers, we analyzed about 100 pages of various newspaper articles (180,000 printed characters with spaces). The conducted content analysis revealed five basic types of vocabulary with emotional and expressive coloring. The results of the analysis showed the dominance of metaphors, epithets, phraseological units, personification, and allusion. According to quantitative estimation, the most widely-used group of vocabulary with emotional and expressive connotation are epithets (250 lexical units). It proves that epithets still remain the leading linguistic tool to express emotions. Within the group of metaphors most lexical units were connected to the forthcoming New Year. Phraseological unit are also widely-spread in regional news portals, as they underline brightness and expressiveness of the language and contribute to its expressiveness. Personification and allusion are used less often. The most examples of allusion refer the readers to the Bible.