Representation of the Verbal Image of Aggression in the Informational Universe of the English-Language Mass Media

Abstract

This contribution explores the representation of the verbal image of aggression in the texts of the English-language digital mass media. The research is based on the quantitative and qualitative semantic analyses of 174 authentic English texts (journalistic reports and newspaper articles) produced during the period of 2013-2015 and selected on the basis of special criteria, which were elaborated in our previous works on detecting descriptors of aggression in written texts. The aim of the research is to reveal the structural components of the verbal image of aggression reproduced in the worldview of Russian native speakers after reading English texts (British and American digital newspapers articles) and to find out if the resulting cognitive model refers to the real act of aggression. The paper contributes to the research field of psycholinguistics, emphasizing the need to support people’s psychological health in the context of an aggressive media environment, which produces high psychological tension. The research methodology is based on a modified associative experiment procedure, which involves 98 native speakers of Russian (university students majoring in linguistics and translation). The obtained results demonstrate a great variability of the structural elements of aggression verbalized in mass media texts. They also indicate that the focus of the reader’s attention is deliberately shifted towards the formation of a hostile cognitive model of the world, with the aggressor and the third party involved in the aggressive act in the center of the battlefield, and the victim of aggression on the periphery. The findings are illustrated by textual examples from authentic British and American newspaper articles and supplied with the author’s commentaries.