Genre features of modern Chinese publicistic texts and issues of their linguistic analysis

Abstract

The present article deals with genre specifics of journalistic texts in the past as well as nowadays, as well as with some issues of applying predication-based language concept to analyzing journalistic texts in Chinese. The article shows that the journalistic genre which according to some experts has lost its importance has risen to prominence again in Russian as well as in foreign press. The article also deals with specific features of journalistic texts in Chinese language published in leading newspapers of the People’s Republic of China. The author also analyses the phenomenon of referencing to precedent texts in the PRC press. It’s shown that the percentage of that kind of references in texts in Chinese is significantly lower than this in journalistic texts in Russian, it’s caused by the differences between this two language speakers’ communities. This being noted, the author also points to the phenomenon of form itself being precedent which is a common one for PRC press. The article shows that the principles of predication-based language concept can be successfully applied in order to achieve solution to this scientific problem. Particularly, if a Chinese text is metaphoric, which we understand as having the so-called “non-banal metaphors” in it, this can be a serious argument in favor of classifying it as a journalistic one. In the applied section of the article the author analyses texts of several articles in Chinese language and classifies language features that can serve as an argument in favour of describing these articles as journalistic ones.