German-language Media Research Articles

Прагматический потенциал рекуррентной лексики в текстах СМИ (на материале новостных сообщений немецкоязычных СМИ о России)

The aim of the research is to describe the pragmatic functions of recurrent vocabulary in media texts of a certain thematic orientation, assessing the possibility of its use as a means of influencing the mass consciousness. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the use of recurrent lexical units in media discourse is considered for the first time from the standpoint of pragmalinguistics as an effective means of manipulating the consciousness of information recipients and forming the linguocognitive space in accordance with the pragmatic interests of the senders of messages. Through the lexical units regularly used and circulated in news messages, there is both an actualization of the social significance of the events, phenomena or concepts designated by them and an imposition of the attitudes and judgments needed by the senders of the texts on the recipients of the messages. As a result of the research, it has been found that the vocabulary of a connotative type recurrently used by German-language media in the news texts about Russia in recent years has a predominantly negative connotation and can act as a linguistic means of influencing the consciousness of German-speaking recipients of the news messages and modeling the linguocognitive space of the news discourse on this topic.

Языковые средства создания негативного образа ископаемых энергоносителей в современном немецком медиадискурсе

The paper presents the results of a linguistic study of persuasive techniques based on German online media outlets publishing articles on the topics of energy, raw materials policy and economics. The aim of the study is to identify a persuasive strategy using which a negative image of fossil hydrocarbons is created in the modern German-language media discourse. The scientific novelty of the work lies in finding the main persuasive techniques that allow influencing public opinion on issues related to the extraction and use of fossil energy in the texts of the media discourse on raw materials. As a result of the study, the main persuasive techniques have been identified, which include the use of negatively charged epithets and metaphors based mainly on motivational components from the semantic fields “Wars”, “Catastrophes”, “Gambling”, as well as the employment of negatively charged precedent phenomena. In addition, the mechanism of the persuasive effect of these techniques has been investigated.

To the issue of mythological reality of modern german-language media text

To the issue of mythological reality of modern german-language media text

THE SUBJECT'S POSITION IN THE SENTENCE IN MASS-MEDIA ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE (IN THE GERMAN-LANGUAGE MEDIA)

The article is devoted to the study of word order in sentences in German-language media texts on environmental topics. It describes the key points in the formation of the analytical structure in the German language and its influence on the word order in a sentence. The cases of the subject in the fourth place in a simple sentence and in the second place in the subordinate clause are analyzed. The sentence members shifting the subject to the right, such as the objects of time and place, mode and degree, conditions, direct and prepositional supplements, were revealed. The frequency of their use is determined. The link between the word order and the actual sentence segmentation is characterized. An attempt has been made to identify the markers of a rhema in the analysed cases and the frequency of their use. Quantitative and ordinal numerals, nouns with quantitative meaning, indefinite article, prepositional group, negation, subordinate clause and demonstrative pronoun were found to be markers of a rhema.

Linguistic Means of Speech Manipulation in the Discourse of Modern German-Language Media

This article touches upon the problem of identifying and analysing speech manipulation in the texts of the German-speaking media. The media determines linguistic and cultural pictures of the world, so the analysis of media language will help to establish trends of influence on the cognitive consciousness of society. In today’s geopolitical environment, the basic functions of the media transform, as it uses specific techniques of speech manipulation to achieve informational and emotive effectiveness, allowing for the distortion of the cognitive perception of information by the audience. The material for this study was German-language media texts, selected by means of a total sampling and semantic-syntactic analysis. The relevance of the study lies in its linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The author states that in the conditions of information pollution all the participants of communication should be able to identify speech manipulation in a text, qualify information in terms of its significance or reliability, and to the risks of exposure to manipulative actions. Taking the peculiarities of speech manipulation methods used in the modern German-language media texts into account, the recipient must have sufficient interpretational competence to allow him or her to overcome the barriers that prevent the identification and mental comprehension of the means of speech manipulation in the texts of foreign-language publications. The main purpose of this study is to remove some difficulties in the perception of information in German-language media text by presenting signs of indirect pressure and speech manipulation in them. To this end, the article classifies the basic techniques of speech manipulation in terms of linguistic analysis, and also justifies the expediency of forming interpretative competence in the sphere of epistemic vigilance. We argue that this competence is effective when it comes to levelling the negative impact of the discourse of German-language media on the cognitive consciousness of the audience.

Алгоритмы поиска фразеологизмов в лингвистическом корпусе с морфологической разметкой (индоевропейские языки)

The aim of the applied research is to build algorithms for searching phraseological units that are compatible with our previously developed model of a linguistic corpus with morphological markup according to spaCy rules. The scientific novelty is due to the fact that for the first time, within the framework of the corpus approach, a set of universal ways to search for phraseological units is proposed with a minimum amount of manual labor and using elements of end-to-end digital technologies. During the study, the technical parameters of phraseological units to be searched were described; the capabilities of the author’s corpus manager within the framework of manual and special manual queries were examined; two algorithms for a two-stage search for individual phraseological units and their groups were developed and tested on the basis of a representative corpus of texts from German-language media; detailed examples of search results were provided. As a result, the consistency of the developed algorithms has been proved and it has been experimentally established that the search error lies in the acceptable range of 0-14.8%.

Дискурсивні характеристики комунікантів модифікованих паремій

The article is devoted to the study of the discursive characteristics of communicators (both the addresser and the addressee) of occasionally modified paremias in modern German-language media discourse. Modified paremias are seen as the result of adaptation of traditional paremias to the features of socio-cultural re-evaluation of social norms and stereotypes, «speech democratization». In the study, it is noted that the modification of paremias is communicatively productive due to the text-forming features of traditional paremias, which serve as templates for new attitudes and semantic associations creation. The inclusion of modifications in the discourse is carried out by the addresser taking into account cognitive and communicative characteristics of the addressee. It was determined that occasionally modified paremias, on the one hand, preserve the established structural and semantic characteristics of traditional paremias, and on the other hand, introduce new communicative meanings and intentions that may correlate or contrast with the original source. It has been suggested that the addresser exerts a dual emotional and intellectual influence on the addressee by means of preserving conceptual implications of traditional paremia, and declaring a subjective vector of cognitive interpretation of information, as well as the type of interpersonal relations with the addressee. It has been concluded that in the aspect of interpersonal relations between communicators, priority is given to social statuses. The dual nature of the addresser’s social status is decisive, as a synergy of the borrowed status of traditional paremia and their personal status. The success of speech cooperation is ensured by interest, communicative identity in terms of background and propositional knowledge, interdependence of the addresser and the addressee. The addresser softens the socially determined authority of traditional paremia for the sake of establishing contact, a certain intimacy, dialogization and simplification of communication with the addressee.

Идеология как фактор перевода: традиции в инновациях

The paper focuses on rendering the ideological component in translation, which engenders significant difficulty for a modern translator. Taking political and gender aspects into consideration, the authors aim to emphasize the importance of correct ideological translation, which is understood as creation of authentic texts in one language based on the original texts in the other language. The material of the study is comprised of authentic German-language media publications posted on the Internet in 2022–2023 and devoted to the topics of "special military operation" and "gender". As a result, it was revealed that in most texts about the special military operation, the translation of the ideological component is carried out not through decoding, but by means of reformulating the information, which leads to its distortion. In feminist discourse, the blurring of gender identity as an element of ideology contributes to the emergence of non-equivalent lexical units, the use of which does not always correspond to the rules adopted in institutional communication in a particular linguistic culture. To implement effective communication, the authors recommend to focus on the ethical principles of interaction. It is concluded that the multiplication of incorrect ideological translation becomes a new challenge for the professional community. In order to respond to it, the translator is to have profound knowledge in the field of culture, history, linguistics and regional studies, which determines the degree of accuracy in information interpretation that occurs while working with any foreign cultural text.

ЭМПИРИКО-ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНОЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ВОСПРИЯТИЯ РУССКОЯЗЫЧНОЙ АУДИТОРИЕЙ НЕМЕЦКОЯЗЫЧНОГО КОНТЕНТА (на материале сериала «Тьма» в оригинале и в переводе)

Audiovisual content has significantly grown in popularity in the recent years. There have been numerous studies devoted to the peculiarities of audiovisual translation of materials, yet the majority of the research focuses solely on theoretical aspects. The article addresses the issue of comprehension and perception of audiovisual materials, as this issue is one of the most perspective and understudied questions of modern linguistics. The authors provide a brief analysis of the theoretical basis of the issue under discussion, referring to the research results of foreign and Russian scholars. The authors also describe the empiric-experimental analysis of German-language media perception by the Russian-speaking audience; summarize the results and outline the conclusions. The article covers the empiric-experimental psycholinguistic research based on the scaling method. The study contains the findings on the influence of the specifics of translation of chosen fragments of the series "Dark" on the audience's perception and comprehension of the audiovisual materials translated into Russian, in comparison with the perception of the same fragments by the audience viewing the original content in German. The authors also formulate the perspectives for further study of the issue in question. The study indicated significant deviations in the translation of the content of some episodes, reflected in the perception disparity between the materials seen in the original and the translated versions. The results suggest that the translated material becomes less expressive; some of the scenes are misrepresented in terms of meaning. The potential for further research is to increase the scope of the material studied and to use additional methods of measuring perceptual disparities, with the help of EEG, oculography, etc.

Linguistic means of speech manipulation in the discourse of modern German-language media

The article touches upon the problem of identifying and analyzing speech manipulation in the texts of German-speaking media. Media determine linguistic and cultural pictures of the world, so the analysis of media language will help to establish trends of influence on the cognitive consciousness of society. In today’s geopolitical environment, the basic functions of the media transform as they use specific techniques of speech manipulation to achieve informational and emotive effectiveness, allowing for the distortion of the cognitive perception of information by the audience. The material for this study was German-language media texts, selected by means of a total sampling and semanticsyntactic analysis. The relevance of the study is in its linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The author states that in the conditions of information pollution all the participants of communication should be able to distinguish the speech manipulation in the text, to qualify information in terms of its significance or reliability, and to calculate the risks of facing manipulative actions. Taking into account the peculiarities of speech manipulation methods used in the modern German-language media texts, the recipient must have sufficient interpretational competence to allow him to overcome the barriers that prevent the identification and mental comprehension of the means of speech manipulation in the texts of foreign-language publications.The main purpose of the study is to remove some difficulties in the perception of information in the German-language media text by presenting signs of indirect pressure and speech manipulation in them. To this end, the article classifies the basic techniques of speech manipulation in terms of linguistic analysis, and also justifies the expediency of the formations of interpretative competence in the sphere of epistemic vigilance. The effectiveness of this competence in relation to leveling the negative impact of the discourse of German-language media on the cognitive consciousness of the audience is argued.

Creation of an English for special purposes textbook for university students – future public relations practitioners

The purpose of the study is to present the author’s experience in creating the ESP textbook “Public Relations. Textbook in English”. The academic novelty of the paper lies in the fact that for the first time the process of creating an ESP textbook for third-year students of an international university (MGIMO-University, Russia) who study English at an advanced level is considered in detail. The paper looked at all stages of writing an English for Special Purposes (ESP) textbook, i.e. book concept development, overall project management, format selection and standardization.As a result, the necessity of using methodological approaches to writing a textbook that could help students develop the competencies of future public relations specialists, as well as enable them to succeed in their careers at the international level, was proved. In addition, examples of language exercises are provided that can be used to develop basic linguistic skills, as well as specific competencies related to the future profession of public relations specialists.course of German-language media on the cognitive consciousness of the audience is argued.

Creation of an English for special purposes textbook for university students – future public relations practitioners

The purpose of the study is to present the author’s experience in creating the ESP textbook “Public Relations. Textbook in English”. The academic novelty of the paper lies in the fact that for the first time the process of creating an ESP textbook for third-year students of an international university (MGIMO-University, Russia) who study English at an advanced level is considered in detail. The paper looked at all stages of writing an English for Special Purposes (ESP) textbook, i.e. book concept development, overall project management, format selection and standardization.As a result, the necessity of using methodological approaches to writing a textbook that could help students develop the competencies of future public relations specialists, as well as enable them to succeed in their careers at the international level, was proved. In addition, examples of language exercises are provided that can be used to develop basic linguistic skills, as well as specific competencies related to the future profession of public relations specialists.course of German-language media on the cognitive consciousness of the audience is argued.

Word-formation mechanisms of linguistic expressiveness in German-language media texts

Word-formation mechanisms of linguistic expressiveness in German-language media texts

Имплицитные способы выражения оценки и авторского начала в медиатекстах о культуре

Our research focuses on identifying implicit ways of expressing evaluation and identifying the role of the author in media texts about culture. In order to analyze the category of evaluation we took Russian-language and German-language articles, which have a common newsworthy occurrence: the 130th anniversary of the birth of Marina Tsvetaeva. In the course of the study the publications were analyzed in terms of the presence of implicit evaluations and the linguistic means by which they are carried out. As a result of the study, it turned out that the evaluation has a predominantly positive character on the part of both Russian and German-speaking publications. The implicit evaluation of the Russian-language media texts was expressed at the level of grammar, while the German-language media texts used metaphors and epithets. We also analyzed publications for the presence of the author in the media text according to two parameters proposed by T. V. Shmeleva: author identification and the degree of media text complexity.

INTERNET MEME AS A PHENOMENON OF MODERN MEDIA DISCOURSE: STYLISTIC-PRAGMATIC ASPECT

The article deals with the German creolized memes of recent years, dedicated to prominent political figures and events, selected by continuous sampling on various Internet platforms and social networks (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook). Modern linguistics focuses on the study of language as a communication tool and the study of verbal structures in accordance with the conditions in which they function. Language means are considered in their purpose to solve specific pragmatic tasks and achieve specific communicative goals, which predetermines the study of not only the structure of language units but also their participation in real communication. The media environment as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon is now not just an area for the creation and consumption of an information product, but also a space, where the information needs of a modern linguistic personality are met, certain life guidelines and values are created. In the digital plane of the media sphere guidelines, trends, and methods of genre organization are formed during the textual transmission of information in a virtual coordinate system, where the new means of transmitting ideas about reality, norms, and problems are approved. The relevance of the article is due to the need to study the linguistic picture of the world of a modern German person and the present German authorities, captured in the digital plane in the format of a meme – a standardized and integral unit of Internet communication in the German-speaking infosphere. The purpose of the study is to highlight the structural features and stylistically pragmatic potential of Internet memes through the prism of their contextual transformation and conversion into elements of ideological influence in modern German-language media discourse. The use of Internet memes in the political sphere stimulates citizens to be more active and interested in various political events, suggests the support of certain political forces. Purposeful creation of such memes is characterized by a clearly expressed ideological goal: influence on the consciousness of members of society and their involvement in a communicative discussion in the vast virtual information space.

Языковая метафора в экономическом медиадискурсе: стратегии перевода

The article deals with the research of language metaphors of English and German-language media discourse. The authors attempt to study the features of the use and translation of language metaphor in economic media discourse. The research material was collected from the economic texts of the English and German online magazines and newspapers "The Economist", "The Guardian", "The Times", " Der Spiegel", "Die Welt", "Focus Online", "Die Zeit", "Der Tagesspiegel", «Leipziger Volkszeitung». The object of this study was 240 original English and German metaphors and their translations into Russian. The importance of the research is explained by the fact that a more thorough study of the features of the expressive means of a foreign language in the texts of a special discourse when performing professionally oriented translation is needed. A review of studies of metaphor in a special discourse is carried out, its structure, functions and semantic classifications in the texts of newspaper publications of an economic orientation are given. The authors point out the most frequent structural (verbal, substantive and adjectival) and semantic (anthropomorphic, nature-morphic, sociomorphic and artifact) classifications of metaphors of this type of publicistic discourse. The results of a comparative analysis of translations of English and German metaphors in economic media articles into Russian are presented in the article. The authors note that in most cases, in the texts of a special discourse, it is possible to transmit a metaphorical image of a foreign language lexical unit by means of the Russian language. The authors draw a conclusion that the successful transfer of foreign language means of expression into Russian in this type of text requires not only the use of the translator's technical arsenal, but also a creative approach to the translation of the studied linguistic phenomenon.

ЕКОЛОГІЧНІ НЕБЕЗПЕКИ: ВИСВІТЛЕННЯ НОВИХ ВИКЛИКІВ У НІМЕЦЬКОМОВНИХ МАСМЕДІА

This study focuses on the coverage of environmental threats in the German-language media. The methodology of this study is based on the ecolinguistic approach, particularly the achievements of media ecology, identifying the harmonization of the media space as a priority for journalism and a relevant area for linguistic studies. The German-language media focuses on the environmental challenges caused by the war in Ukraine, the threat of imminent climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The effectiveness of their media presentation by the lexical and stylistic means is becoming relevant for linguistic research. The anthropocentric worldview of the human being causes a significant manipulative effect of anthropomorphic metaphor on the reader and helps to promote a conscious attitude to the environment. The distinguished models of metaphor and metonymy, used to increase the emotional plane of the described content, indicate the possibility of their use as a tool for awakening ecolinguistic consciousness. The socio- and psycholinguistic experiment determined the peculiarities of the German-speaking respondents' reception of publications on environmental issues. Representatives of the younger generation (mostly students) were interviewed, which allowed forming an idea of their interest in overcoming ecological problems and finding out popular sources of information about them. The impossibility of an immediate comprehensive expert assessment of the consequences of the war in Ukraine for all ecosystems determines further research into the means of media attention to this issue.

Метафоры пандемического дискурса (на материале СМИ Германии)

This article focuses on the analysis of metaphorical representations of the coronavirus pandemic in texts selected by continuous sampling from German-language media. The methodological basis of the research is the theory of conceptual metaphor, as well as the Russian theory of metaphorical modeling, which allow us to single out universal metaphorical models that are in line with the Zeitgeist and are part of the national picture of the world. Pandemic discourse was selected as the research space. It is understood as a media supertext or as a collection of media texts united by one topic and aimed at reflecting events associated with the pandemic. Further, the article examines predictable metaphorical models – the military model with an extensive system of slots representing most of the elements of “military” actions aimed at combating the virus; the disaster model (tsunami, storm, fire) showing the attitude to the virus as to a dangerous and uncontrollable phenomenon; the ambivalent road model (the road from the pandemic, on the one hand, and the road along which the virus is walking around the world, on the other); the legal model focusing attention on the protest part of the discourse; the zoomorphic model; the theatrical-game model. The author shows an example of the interaction of units of different metaphorical models for the implication of certain nuances of meaning. The conceptual metaphors that fill the slots of these models show the complex moral and psychological state of society and an ambiguous social attitude towards the pandemic reality. The final part of the article describes living metaphors, born as a response to the anxiety of the situation and fear, realizing unconventional meanings, to some extent a carnival attitude to what is happening, speaking ironically and/or describing everything in a plain, upfront way. A striking linguistic fact in this category of metaphors is serial metaphors, which form large word families and, by one feature, characterize a number of objects or phenomena of the new reality. Attention is drawn to complex metaphors, the semantics of which is made up of a pun on the direct meanings of the components. The conclusion states the high degree of emotional impact of metaphors, the dynamism of the metaphorical picture of the pandemic reality, its dependence on many objective and individual factors, as well as on ideological reasons. The prospect of the research is seen in the description of anthropomorphic metaphorical images of pandemic discourse of the corona-humoristic texts.

REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT HELD IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE INTERNET DISCOURSE

The article deals with the specifics of the use of the concept HELD in the Modern German-language Internet discourse. The archetype of the hero is an important structure of both the individual and the collective unconscious, an element of both social and political culture of the nation. The semantic content of this archetype for the German people can be explored through the prism of its reflection in the relevant HELD concept, which is presented in the linguistic picture of the world of native speakers of the German language and language culture. In our study, we will focus on the use of the concept HELD in the headlines of Internet content, because the global network is the fastest to reflect all the trends and changes in the modern world in general and in public discourse in particular. The aim of our study is to analyze the features of the objectification of the HELD concept in the German linguoculture based on Internet discourse. To achieve this goal we will set the following tasks: 1) to analyze the transformation of the semantic content of the HELD concept in historical retrospect; 2) to single out the compatibility of the Held concept in the German-language Internet discourse and to distribute the selected material by semantic groups; 3) to analyze the semantic content of the HELD concept in the German-language Internet discourse. This article analyzes the compatibility of the concept and identifies key contexts, formed semantic groups for the use of the concept HELD in the linguistic picture of the world of modern Germans. As a result, conclusions were drawn about certain aspects of the social process in the modern German-speaking world (and, to some extent, Western civilization), which are reflected in the use and semantic content of the concept HELD in Internet discourse. The study of the context of the use of the concept HELD in modern German-language Internet discourse allows us to trace its associative-derivational (epidegmatic) connections, which fully reflect the connotation of the word at a certain time and in the relevant socio-cultural space. Thus, the use of the concept HELD in modern German-language media discourse allows us to highlight the semantic content of the concept, the dynamics of the archetype in the German-speaking space, as well as to trace the dominant values and current problems of society.

Errors in machine translation from German into Russian (based on articles of German-language media and their translations)

The article is devoted to the study of errors and inaccuracies made by machine translation systems. The reasons for the appearance of errors of various types in the texts of machine translations of German-language articles of well-known mass media into Russian, made by popular translation programs, are analyzed. A classification of errors is given. The lexical-semantic and lexical-stylistic, normative-usual, grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors are highlighted. Typical “weaknesses” of machine translation from German into Russian are revealed, which should be paid attention to during post-editing of the text of such a translation. It is pointed out that the analysis of typical errors in automatic translation can also be taken into account in the process of improving the algorithm of their work by the developers of machine translation systems.