Varieties of ironic objection in popular science Internet media text

Abstract

The article focuses on the objectionable potential of irony using popular science media texts. The empirical basis was the hypermedia text of the news about the refutation of the serotonin theory of depression, which predetermined a significant shift in ideas about the disease. The purpose of the article is to identify and analyze the variability in the implementation of ironic objection. The latter seems to be a complexly organized speech action, which is based on goal setting, which constitutes a subgoal in achieving the main communicative goal of the hypermedia text. The pre-established multitasking of the study determined the choice of approach to analysis — the praxeological method of media linguistics. As the analysis of the material has shown, objection demonstrates the moment of transition of scientific knowledge from hypotheticality to a state of epistemological certainty. Objection helps to overcome unproductive tendencies in the system of academic views. Linguistically significant characteristics of ironic objection in popular science media discourse include extensive heuristic potential, projection of the development of epistemological modality, critical rethinking of extra-linguistic situations, involvement of the addressee in discussion, debatable nature, and requiring interpretive effort. The results obtained during the study — linguistic models of the representation of ironic objection — demonstrate a paradigm shift in scientific views about the mechanisms of depressive disorder and the key lines of understanding in the public consciousness of the problems correlated with the identified epistemological crisis. In this study, patterns of speech representation of ironic objection are identified and typologized on the basis of repeated and regularly reproduced linguistic markers.