Representation of Street Food in the Russian Media Discourse: Cognitive and Pragmatic Aspects

Abstract

The present paper is devoted to the problem of representing street food in the Russian media discourse. The author investigates social and linguistic factors of street food representation in the media discourse, in particular, the social factors that influence the journalist as well as peculiarities of the linguistic forms of street food representation. The social factors include the place, participants and their characteristics, street food and its peculiar features, such actions as cooking, selling and consuming street food etc. The author also analyzes language units (words, word combinations, utterances) used in the media text to construct a specific picture of the social factor sreferring to street food. Additionally, the paper studies the realization of cognitive models within the media discourse. The connection between cognitive models’ realization and the journalist’s pragmatic goal aimed at positively representing street food in the Russian media discourse is also studied. The research was conducted on the basis of an internet version of the national IZVESTIYA newspaper.