English-language Mass Media Research Articles

РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЯ ЭМОЦИЙ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНОЙ И ИСПАНОЯЗЫЧНОЙ ПРЕССЕ

This research is devoted to the study of emotive vocabulary in modern Spanish-language and English-language mass media. Application of methods of contextual, stylistic and semantic analysis, methods of quantitative calculation and continuous sampling, emotion classifications by K. Izard and V.I. Shakhovsky in a step-by-step analysis of language means expressing emotions in analyzed texts in English and Spanish allow us to talk about the predominance of negative emotions in the articles. In publications in Spanish and English, texts on politics, economics, football, coronavirus and ecology have the highest emotionality. The specifics of expressing emotions in newspaper texts turned out to be directly related to the national characters of the Spaniards and the British.

How headlines communicate: A functional-pragmatic analysis of small-format texts in English-language mass media

How headlines communicate: A functional-pragmatic analysis of small-format texts in English-language mass media

COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparison via Facebook posts.

Newspapers and other mass media outlets are critical in shaping public opinion on a variety of contemporary issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how the pandemic is portrayed in the news and how the public reacted differently in the West and East using archival data from Facebook posts about COVID-19 news by English-language mass media between January 2020 and April 2022 (N = 711,646). Specifically, we employed the Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (Vader) to measure the news tone on each COVID-19 news item shared on Facebook by mass media outlets. In addition, we calculated a polarity score based on Facebook special reactions (i.e., love, angry, sad, wow, haha, and care) received by each post to measure public reactions toward it. We discovered that people in Western countries reacted significantly more negatively to COVID-19 news than their East counterparts, despite the fact that the news itself, in aggregate, generally contained a relatively similar level of neutral tone in both West and East media. The implications of these distinctions are discussed in greater detail.

Discursive-Pragmatic Creativity in English-Language Chinese Mass Media

The issue of linguistic creativity in Chinese mass media sources published in English is considered. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the English-language discourse of the Chinese mass media is studied as an independent culturally conditioned speech activity phenomenon that actualizes the cultural values of China and the civilizational values of the East. It is substantiated that linguistic creativity is realized in English texts through various forms of manifestation of Chinese national communicative identity: proverbs, allegories, analogies, hints, allusions, rooted in Chinese history, philosophy and folk experience. The updated concepts of proverbs emphasize the values of constant evolutionary movement on the principle of “movement in the still” and the values of collectivism, which are significant both in the country itself and in the region and the world. The collectivism peculiar to China determined the accentuation of the anti-value concepts of hegemony, shame, slander and humiliation. It has been proved that linguistic creativity in the Chinese media in English is also expressed in wordplay and word creation, if this contributes to a more effective presentation of China's position to the English-speaking audience and does not violate the principle of appropriateness. It has been established that in the Chinese English-language mass media, linguistic creativity is of a discursive-pragmatic nature, allows copying samples of linguistic creativity from English-language media and is supplemented with new associations and meanings in their own cultural context.

Functioning peculiarities of the Russism gulag in English-language mass media

Functioning peculiarities of the Russism gulag in English-language mass media

Языковой портрет России и русских в англоязычной культуре

The purpose of the research is to determine the role of linguistic means and extralinguistic factors in the formation of the images of Russia and the Russian nation in English-language mass media, works of art, as well as to identify their everyday understanding of Russia. Scientific novelty of the paper is determined by an integrative approach to studying the image of Russia, which includes fragments of nonlinguistic (political science, journalism) and linguistic (stylistics, linguoculturology) paradigms of knowledge. As a result of the research, it has been found that the reflection of national specificities in the figurative linguistic sign, the evolution of this image are expressed to the fullest extent in the spheres associated with influence - in the press and literature.

The expressive function of colloquialisms in professional discourse: The linguopragmatic aspect

In this study the expressive function of colloquialisms is examined through the lens of linguopragmatics using the material from professional discourse, which is marked by a strict structure of expressing ideas. The study identifies expressive means of influencing the recipient and traces general trends of using colloquialisms in the English-language mass media texts as well as transcripts of business talks held between some major companies. The paper elucidates the concept of linguopragmatics and defines the subject of studies within this discipline, as well as addresses notions of colloquialisms and their expressive function. We have found that colloquialisms are increasingly used in professional discourse. The study provides an overview of the concept of lexical-semantic field, as colloquialisms are mostly actualised at the lexical level. The authors investigate the lexical-semantic field “to invest money” comprised of colloquialisms from English-language mass media outlets, along with colloquialisms used in transcripts of large companies. The following expressive means of producing an influence on the recipient have been found in the texts: bold type, capitalisation of each word, italics, numerals, capitalisation of abbreviations (the graphic level); phrasal words, metaphors, allusions, positive particles, abbreviations, epithets, short forms of nouns (the lexical level); declarative sentences, interrogatory sentences, parcellation, antithesis, parallel structures (the syntactic level). The expressive function of colloquialisms is widely reflected in professional discourse. After comparing the use of colloquialisms in mass media texts and talks transcripts we found that the most frequent expressive means are declarative sentences at the syntactical level and metaphors at the lexical level.

Celebrity gossip as a genre in English-language mass media discourse

The multidimensionality of rumours as part and parcel of mass communication has stipulated the research in their linguistic nature. The present paper studies this specific communication phenomenon and the discursive practices by means of which it is realized across the Anglophone mass media discourse continuum. The theory of discourse-analysis underpinning the present paper predetermines an integrative approach with various methods employed. This approach makes it possible to gain an insight into the complex nature of the object under study. The research is targeted at media rumours, namely celebrity gossip, manifested in on-line versions of the printed press and original web outlets in 2015-2018. The main goal of the research is to reveal specific features of media rumors as a speech genre in the Anglophone media communication. Celebrity gossip texts make up the empiric material for the present study. This aim is achieved via the description of the content and form of the text-type structure supplemented by an application of stylistic analysis. In terms of the topics, the findings demonstrate a wide variety of topoi comprising both public (social interactions) and private spheres of celebrities’ life with an emphasis on privacy, sensationalism and scandalous impropriety as dominant discursive characteristics of the text-type samples under study. The structure of the celebrity gossip discourse is represented by texts in different journalistic forms: from informative genres to feature type variations used by authors as means of constructing celebrity culture. The information of trivial content and questionable validity because of its unverified character is disguised as reports of high testimonial trustworthiness and epistemic value with the help of a variety of language and textual resources. The results of the study enable us to argue that within the mass media communication there exists a specific discourse which is hybrid by nature and non-evidential by verification.

Способы выражения вертикального контекста в языке СМИ на материале современного английского языка

The paper aims to reveal specificity of vertical context representation in the English-language mass media. Vertical context is traditionally considered within the framework of the literary style. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the authors develop terminological apparatus to describe and analyse vertical context by the material of the English-language journalistic texts. The conducted research allows concluding that the English-language mass media most frequently refer to social and historical context represented by proper names, toponyms and realia, but philological vertical context, though less frequent, also exists.

Переводческие трансформации и стратегии перевода в сфере политической коммуникации (на материале англоязычных СМИ)

The study aims to identify translation transformations employed in the English-to-Russian translation in the field of political communication. The article analyses translation requirements, the opposition “literal - loose” translation. As empirical material, the researchers use political texts from the English-language mass media and their translation into Russian found on the website InoSMI. Scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying ways for creating adequate and equivalent translation of political texts guided by the text’s meaning. As a result of analysing examples, the following translation transformations, used in translation in the field of political communication, are identified: differentiation, concretisation, generalisation of meanings, semantic development and holistic transformation, addition and other techniques.

Modern Russia in focus of phraseology (based on the material of english language mediatexts)

The article focuses on the usage of idioms for characterizing the image of Russia in the English language media discourse. To understand the meaning of the phraseological unit one should apply the method of discourse analysis. The discourse analysis of the mediatext takes into account extra-linguistic, linguistic and cognitive factors. Extra-linguistic factors include political situation, current events, and ideology of a state and media outlet. Linguistic analysis provides for the investigation of the semantics of the idiom and its connotative potential. Cognitive analysis shows the intentions of the author to create either positive or negative opinion of events described. Connotative meaning is determined by means of linguocognitive analysis considering extra-linguistic factors. The semantics of the idiom contains subjective modalities (axiological, emotive and deontic) representing different assessments of the reality. Modality can be identified with cognitive-modal operators specifying different types of evaluation: rational, emotional, normative. The analysis of the semantic structure of phraseological units is conducted in our research. It is aimed at characterizing the role of Russia in the global world by means of idioms. The discourse approach enables to determine the connotative potential of phraseological units and to describe the image of our country in the English language mass media.

Реализация коннотационного потенциала метафоры при создании образа женщины-политика (на материале англоязычных СМИ)

Реализация коннотационного потенциала метафоры при создании образа женщины-политика (на материале англоязычных СМИ)

Языковая репрезентация информационного источника в ситуации слухов (на материале англоязычных медиатекстов)

The article is devoted to the relevant problem of information verification. The paper aims to study the means of linguistic representation of the information source in the English-language mass media. Originality of the study involves identifying how reliable the information presented in the mass media is by analysing the semantics of the lexical units representing the information source. The research findings allow concluding about a special role of certain pragma-communicative factors actualized at lexical, morphological and syntactic levels.

The figurative portrait of President of Russia Vladimir Putin, created by the English-language mass media

Статья посвящена исследованию оценочной лексики, используемой англоязычными СМИ, в частности журналом The Economist, при создании образного портрета президента России В.Путина. В ходе исследования выявлены типичные оценочные ситуации, в которых представлен Президент России, а также определены релевантные качества В.Путина, акцентируемые в англоязычной прессе, и формирующие его образный портрет. Выделены четыре тематические группы: ВОИНСТВЕННЫЙ и ОПАСНЫЙ, ЛИДЕР СЛАБОЙ СТРАНЫ, СЛАБЫЙ, но ПРИТВОРЯЕТСЯ СИЛЬНЫМ, КОВАРНЫЙ и ХИТРЫЙ. Прозвища, данные Путину англоязычными СМИ, имеют в основном негативные оценочные коннотации или иронический подтекст. Прозвищные перифразы, как рациональные, так и образные гиперболизируют черты образного портрета Президента России.

Кросс-культурная паремиология: китайские пословицы и поговорки в англоязычных китайских СМИ

Кросс-культурная паремиология: китайские пословицы и поговорки в англоязычных китайских СМИ

English-Language Mass Media of Malaysia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

English-Language Mass Media of Malaysia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives