Sociocultural stereotypes in different genres of American media discourse in the middle of the last century

Abstract

The article provides the analysis of the means that represent sociocultural stereotypes in radio and television genres of American media discourse in the middle of the 20th century. In a cognitive-linguistic perspective, the definition of a sociocultural stereotype has been specified as a verbalized mental construct of an ethnically and culturally marked, idealized image of a person, a social group or a phenomenon. The research results prove that the analyzed sociocultural stereotypes evoke feelings to a social group or an individual, reflected in verbal and nonverbal codes. Emotional and evaluative perception of sociocultural stereotypes is dependent on the historical and cultural context. Positively evaluated stereotypes embody American cultural values. Aimed at describing the linguistic means of representation of sociocultural stereotypes, the research methodology is based on a discursive analysis and involves interpretation of media texts within the thematic and historical contexts. It has been revealed that the analyzed means that represent sociocultural stereotypes in media discourse manifest in lexical units, thematic selection of syntactic constructions, rhetorical and stylistic devices. Represented by audio-visual means in media discourse, sociocultural stereotypes are considered as complex semantic units of speech, visual, behavioral, and ethical characteristics of individuals or social groups. It has been proved that behavioral characteristics of sociocultural stereotypes are based on a speech specificity of social groups, which demonstrates their origin and social status manifested in prosodic means, lexical and grammatical forms of the utterances.