PRAGMATIC OPPOSITION “SELF” / “ALIEN” IN NEWSPAPER MACROTEXT: PECULIARITIES OF FUNCTIONING

Abstract

The research deals with the pragmatic peculiarities of subject manifestation in a newspaper macrotext about a crisis situation. The integrity of semantic structure of a newspaper macrotext is determined by the cohesion of the covered theme – “Crisis Situation”. In the researched macrotext “Flooding in Great Britain” the unity of the theme is recognized both on the vertical of macrotext (among different articles of the same newspaper issue) and its horizontal (among the articles of a number of consecutive newspaper issues of the British weekly newspaper “Sunday Telegraph”). The newspaper macrotext is considered as a system in the center of which there is a person. The people depicted in the articles about crisis situations are subjects who assume different pragmatic positions. The subjects belong to either of the oppositions “self” / “alien”. The victims of the crisis situation, the people who support them and sympathize with them belong to “self”. The subjects who do harm to the people identified as “self” are considered as “alien”. It turns out that the roles of “self” and “alien” belong to the people who are not initial antagonists, here we deal with the so-called pragmatic antonymy. So, in the macrotext “Flooding in Great Britain” pragmatic antonymy is represented by the following opposition: victims and those who sympathize with them / representatives of the authorities. The subjects’ identification as “self” or “alien” depends on others’ personal attitude formed under the influence of individual and social values. The structure of opposition “self” / “alien” in a newspaper macrotext depicting crisis situations caused by natural hazards is flexible. The subject position can change in accordance with the changes in the situation. As a result, the division of subjects’ roles can vary among articles in a newspaper macrotext.