Newspaper Discourse Research Articles

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINE AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE VOCABULARY

New research should be conducted in Kazakh linguistics in order to identify the potential and functioning of the modern written language in society. The language of the periodical press is an actual form of communication between society and government, communicative and informational activity, as a vivid expression of the written language. Therefore, it is important to analyze changes in the language and the dynamics of language development using newspaper vocabulary. An important structural part of the newspaper is the newspaper headline. The headline in the newspaper discourse is designed to realize its main functions: influencing, evaluative and informational. Journalists, as subjects of speech, use various linguistic means that can most fully realize the planned communicative goals. At the same time, special attention is paid to the title, which, being both a component of the text and an independent unit of speech, should attract the attention of the addressee to the publication, encourage him to read the published information. The headings are very indicative in this regard precedent texts, as well as a precedent name. This article examines the effectiveness of the newspaper headline and semantic features of the vocabulary

Views on “Good English” and “Nordic Exceptionalism” in Finland

In the Nordic countries, widespread proficiency in English is positioned as a positive and even critical component of overall global competitiveness and competence. Indeed, maps illustrating who speaks the “best” English in Europe show a swath across the Nordic countries, and the number of people in the Nordic countries claiming proficiency in English is only a few percentage points below those in places such as the UK and Ireland. At the same time, the Nordic countries are routinely listed as the “happiest,” the most egalitarian, the most classless, least corrupt, and an epicenter for so-called “tender values.” In recent years, there has been a spate of publications highlighting how Nordic exceptionalism carries with it some unfortunate downsides, including the possibility for people to ignore or fail to acknowledge issues such as racism, sexism, and other social inequalities because of the affordance: “But our society is equal.” There is a parallel in the use of English. The entrenched notion that “everyone is good at English” overlooks that certain segments of the population—such as the elderly, immigrants and rural inhabitants—do not have the same level of access to the symbolic capital represented through facility in English. In this sense, the use of English presents social/class-based barriers that the national languages do not. This article offers a critique of the social realities relating to the use of English in the Nordic Countries within the context of the social welfare system and “Nordic exceptionalism,” focusing mostly on Finland. Making use of examples of discourse in newspapers, previous research and language policy documents, the chapter highlights how aspects of the use of English in Finland parallel other potentially hyped yet unequitable social issues.

Conceptual metaphors in North African French-speaking news discourse about COVID-19

Conceptual metaphors have received much attention in research on discourse about infectious diseases in recent years. Most studies found that conceptual metaphors of war dominate media discourse about disease. Similarly, a great deal of research has been undertaken on the new coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, especially in the English news discourse as opposed to other languages. The present study, in contrast, analyses the conceptual metaphors used in COVID-19 discourse in French-language newspapers. The study explored the linguistic metaphors used in COVID-19 discourse in these newspapers and conceptual metaphors that underlie and motivate them, using a conceptual metaphor theory framework (CMT). Therefore, two North African French-language newspapers, namely Libération, published in Morocco, and La Presse de Tunisie, published in Tunisia, formed the corpus of the current study. The results showed that the most frequent framing of COVID-19 was in terms of WAR, followed by DISASTER and KILLER, respectively.

Risk and resilience in a changing climate: a diachronic analysis in the press across the globe

AbstractBuilding on our previous work investigating discourses of climate-induced mobility in the UK and US press, this paper addresses the overarching theme of environmental issues and the anthropocene by looking into representations of migration as adaptation in the context of climate change. In particular, drawing on corpus-assisted discourse analysis methodologies, the paper will focus on, and critically explore, meaning patterns of “risk” and “resilience” in a purpose-built diachronic corpus of quality newspapers from the Global North and the Global South between 2010 and 2017. Risk and resilience may in fact be regarded as the defining – though problematic – terms of our anthropogenic era. The investigation focuses on whether and how any significant discursive shifts may be identified in newspaper discourse across the globe and the extent to which the mainstream press reflects this problematicity. Our main findings show that not only is mention of risk more frequent in the Global North throughout than in the Global South media outlets, whereas the opposite is observed for resilience, but also that distinct meaning patterns emerge over time across the different areas of the world under investigation.

Combination ‘v lyubom sluchaye’ (any way): Functioning in Text and Pragmatic Potential

The article is devoted to the description of text structures based on a combination ‘v lyubom sluchaye’ (any way). The analysis was carried out on the material of the texts of the newspaper subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The relevance of the study is due to a multidimensional approach to describing the textual nature of connectivity, including the use of a cognitive-semantic approach to the study of a text from the standpoint of the speaker’s intention, which is consistent with the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics. Within this paradigm, special attention should be paid to transitional linguistic units that occupy an intermediate position between official and significant lexemes and are used by the speaker to form a certain semantic task into a text structure, defined in the article through the concept of a text structure. As an example of such a unit, the combination ‘v lyubom sluchaye’ (any way) is used. It is shown that at a certain position in the text on the border of the utterance, the combination performs the function of a text clip, forms standard text blocks. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of scenarios and models for the presentation of information on the material of newspaper discourse texts. The results of the modality analysis of the of right side the of the structure, which determines the explication of one of the two meanings of the clip ‘free choice’ and ‘universality’ is presented in the article. It is described how the pragmatic potential of the combination is realized in the structure of the textual construction ‘v lyubom sluchaye’ (any way), depending on the nature of the alternative circumstances of the left side of the structure (options, conditions, opinions, assumptions).

Construction of a Value-Based Model of Image of the Russian and American Police in the Newspaper Discourse

Construction of a Value-Based Model of Image of the Russian and American Police in the Newspaper Discourse

The influence of the Guardian newspaper discourse on gender stereotypes in british society

The influence of the Guardian newspaper discourse on gender stereotypes in british society

ПРЕЦЕДЕНТНОЕ ИМЯ В ГАЗЕТНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

The article presents the results of observations on the functioning of precedent names in modern newspaper discourse. The language game manifesting itself in various methods of using precedent names is a stylistic means of enhancing the expressiveness of the text.

A comparative study of HEALTH in newspaper articles of the 1980s and 2000s: a corpus based analysis

The notion of health is of vital importance for the society. The research analyses and compares the corpora processed with the help of Sketch Engine. The collocations with HEALTH taken from The Guardian 80 and modern as well as The Mirror 80 and modern are in the focus of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. While the analysis such research methods were used as: discourse and critical analyses are used to study collocations with HEALTH in British broadsheets and tabloids; corpus analysis – to single out key words representing HEALTH in the corpus broadsheets and tabloids; contextual-interpretative analysis – to establish specifics features of discursive representation of the collocations with HEALTH in the media discourse and tabloids; quantitative analysis – to interpret and compare results obtained. The collocations chosen for this research are nouns modified by HEALTH. The n-grams show the differences and similarities as for the health collocations in The Guardian 80/The Mirror 80, The Guardian modern/The Mirror modern as well as The Guardian 80/The Guardian modern and The Mirror 80/The Mirror modern. The findings of the study show top health collocations, such as health care, health problem, health benefit, health issue, health expert, health support. The frequency of their being used in the newspaper discourse can vary in the broadsheet or the tabloid. Besides, newspaper discourse accentuates certain problems revealed in the life of the society either in the 80s or nowadays. The research reveals the health collocation differences between two different newspapers as well as between the newspapers with the same name at different times. The analysis shows that the newspaper discourse reflects the idea promoted by the societal health approaches.

Constructions of Moral Values in Reader Comments of the Samantha Sex Robot Discourse in East African Newspapers

Abstract Although artificial intelligence (ai) has been touted as revolutionary, this technology has sparked ethical concerns, with man accused of attempting to create a ‘play God’ with it. While creators of sex robots have been hailed for reigniting sexual relationships, they have received flack in equal measure for their apparent moral absurdity. From a Christian values perspective, this study interrogates how the Samantha sex robot invention was framed in 129 online reader comments in two East African newspapers – The Standard and The Daily Monitor. Findings showed that comments fell under the value themes of ‘family bond’, ‘compromised conscience’, and ‘apocalypse’. While a few positioned sex robots as a panacea to domestic instability, the majority opinion viewed the robots as ‘destroyers’ of the God-ordained family unit and tools of dehumanizing women, and thus morally contradictory to Christian teachings. Justifying sex robots was considered to be ‘negotiating’ or ‘rationalizing’ with established Christian values and therefore ‘rebelling against God’. Man’s extremity with the creation and use of sex robots sparked predictions of a self-fulfilling prophecy of his extermination for inciting the wrath of God. The preservation of culture also underpinned the ethical evaluations of robots by some commenters.

Некоторые игровые стратегии в языке современной газеты: графические окказиональные слова

The aim of our article was to analyze some game strategies for creating occasional graphic innovations in the modern newspaper discourse of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan. In connection with this goal, the following tasks were set: - to identify occasional innovations in the Russian and Kazakh Russian-language press, which are a means of a language (graphic) game. - to clarify the typology of graphic game techniques in the newspaper discourse of the two countries in order to record any changes (upward or downward) in their use by the journalists of the two countries for the period from 2008 to 2021. - to consider occasional word formation on the example of innovations of recent years, motivated by both appellatives and various kinds of onyms (anthroponyms, toponyms, etc.), as well as abbreviations); - to find out whether this type of language graphic game is a popular means of attracting the attention of potential readers. The object of our research is graphic innovations in newspaper headlines, formed in various graphic ways. The analysis of newspaper material shows the variety of graphic techniques in the modern Russian and Kazakh Russian-language press. These are capitalization, graphoderivation, orthographic occasional words, as well as various means of paragraphics (brackets, quotation marks, etc.), the use of which indicates the strengthening of the game principle in the newspaper language. The graphic game in the language of the newspaper is mainly found in the headings. The sources of factual material were Russian and Kazakh newspapers for the period from 2008 to 2020. The material for the article were the headlines of the newspaper articles in the Russian and Kazakh Russian-language press, as well as the texts of the articles themselves, which include graphic occasional words that were identified and analyzed by the author personally.

COMMUNICATIVE-PRAGMATIC POTENTIAL OF COMPLEX WORDS OF THE PANDEMIC PERIOD (ON THE MATERIAL OF UKRAINIAN NEWSPAPER TEXTS)

The proposed article focuses on the emergence and renewal of the lexical composition of the modern Ukrainian language during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, considers the process of emergence of new complex units, the dynamics of their semantics and their acquisition of new meanings; the appearance of new complex words related to the spread of coronavirus disease and its impact on the linguistic situation in modern newspaper discourse identified trends in their activation. The widespread spread of the disease is reflected not only in medicine and all social spheres, but also in the lexical structure of many languages, including Ukrainian. The purpose of our article is to consider the current changes in complex innovations in the Ukrainian newspaper discourse caused by the new social conditions of existence during the pandemic; to study the origin and functioning of the tokens Covid and coronavirus, to analyze the thematic range and the corresponding communicative and pragmatic potential of complex innovations related to the coverage of Covid-19. The object of the study is complex words represented in the texts of modern newspaper discourse during the pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19. The subject of the study is the communicative and pragmatic features of complex words (based on Ukrainian newspaper texts), the spread of which is associated with the pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19. It is established that the most common among the complex innovations in the newspaper discourse of this period are the tokens COVID-19, coronavirus, which became a source of widespread creation of new complex words from them. Chronologically, the article covers the period from early 2020 to the first half of 2021.

Полидискурсивность как способ реализации категории интерсемиотичности (на материале прессы Германии и США)

The paper examines multi-discursivity as a means of the intersemioticity category realization in the German and American newspaper discourse. Multi-discursivity is considered as integrity of discursive models within a single text. Special attention is paid to analysing multi-discursive models harmoniously supplementing each other in the German and American newspaper discourse. Scientific originality of the research involves the linguo-cultural approach to analysing the multi-discursivity phenomenon. This problem is poorly investigated and requires further study. The research findings are as follows: the author identifies specificity of the multi-discursivity category realization in the German and American newspaper discourse. The role of hyperlinks as a component of multimodal newspaper discourse is emphasized.

Publicisticdiscourseand social and communicative relations

The article deals with the application of the theory of interdisciplinary discourse, the function of publicistic discourse,  the definition of discourse, communication issues in the socio-cultural context.The use of the term «discour» in a comprehensive study of the concept of linguistic communication from a new point of view leads to breakthroughs in modern science. Discourse, which is one of the new levels of research, is viewed as a broad and complex structure. In this regard, a study of publicistic discourse is carried out, taking into account its signs and nature of use. Attention is drawn to the need for theoretical and practical consideration of publicisticdiscourse in various forms – television discourse, newspaper discourse.The  purpose  of  this  article is to show  the importance  of methods for realizing  the relationship between addressee and addressee in a new paradigmatic model, establishing  interaction with  society in  publicistic  discourse. The sequential use of both professional and ethnic factors in the organization of institutional discourse is described. The study provides classifications of categories of publicistic discourse, characterizes the place of publicistic discourse in the communicative space, describes the advantages and disadvantages of television and newspaper discourse in the space of social and communicative relations. The methodological basis of publicistic discourse is the realization of the idea of   pride in the country. The author considers it important to form a patriotic spirit through successful communication with  the addressee through the use of communication strategies and tactics. The need for research within the framework of publicistic discourse in order to form linguistic consciousness, background knowledge about the environment based on human factors is emphasized. The article will be of interest to scholars engaged in discursive research. Keywords: discourse, journalistic discourse, social-communicative relations, TV-radio discourse, newspaper discourse

Актуализация образа первой леди в рамках стереотипизации имиджа президента в СМИ (на примере 43-го и 45-го президентов США и их жен)

This article aims to reveal the specifics of the actualization of the family image within the framework of image stereotyping of a politician in mass media. For several decades, mass media discourse has been paying special attention to the personal lives of political leaders and opinion leaders, satisfying the needs of readers eager to learn what they are like in everyday life and personal relationships. This study provides a definition of the concept of a politician’s communicative behaviour, shaping his speech portrait, which is to a large extent formed through the media. The speech portrait is made up of the politician’s rhetoric (either conservative or liberal) implemented in public speeches. At the same time, a politician’s image often depends on mass media, more precisely, on their attitude towards him/her, the narration about the politician’s family playing an important role in this. The empirical material of this study includes newspaper articles of the English-language periodicals The Guardian and Politico from 2009–2020, writing about the presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush and their family members. These periodicals are of interest due to their political orientation, within the framework of which the images of these politicians and their family members are shaped. Turning to comparative analysis, the author identified the relationship between a politician’s image and the representation of his family members in the press. In addition, discourse analysis was used, logically supplemented with linguoculturological and sociopragmalinguistic modelling of communicative interaction. The research found that mass media discourse presents the politicians’ family life through the representation of their wives, often with gender stereotyping. Moreover, there is a clear process of delimiting the spouses in newspaper discourse, i.e. the image of a politician does not always affect the image of his wife, which means that they are viewed independently from each other.

Newspaper headlines as a tool for linguistic modeling of police image

The article considers the issue of linguistic modeling of the image of the police in the newspa[1]per discourse, in newspaper headlines in particular. This article is relevant and determined by the need to study the representation of reality in the media discourse and its linguistic manifestation. In addition, the media have recently paid close attention to the coverage of the activities of social institutions, especially with regard to law enforcement agencies. The authors describe the characteristics of the mass media discourse as one of the tools for implementing public power, organizing the activities of political and social institutions, and forming an image. The paper considers the specific features and functions of the newspaper discourse, and also considers the newspaper headline, which acts as a pragmatic component of a newspaper article contributing to the creation of information and social mediation between addressees and addressers in order to exert a regulatory influence on public opinion. The article focuses on the structural, semantic and stylistic analysis of the newspaper headlines that represent information about law enforcement agencies’ activities in Russia and the United States. The authors divide the publications into neutral (“Arguments and Facts”, “USA Today”, “Wall Street Journal”), pro-government (“Newspaper. Ru”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” and “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, “Associated Press”) and opposition newspapers (“Novaya Gazeta”, “Kommersant”, “The New York Times”, “Washington Post”). In total, 60 newspaper headlines were analyzed for the period from September to December 2020. The results show that the texts of newspaper reports perform informative and pragmatic functions, and the newspaper headline is the key to understanding the author’s position and intentions. Lexical, grammatical, and stylistic differences in the headlines of Russian and American newspapers devoted to the activities of law enforcement agencies were identified, as well as language techniques for exerting speech influence on the reader and linguistic modeling of the police image.

Suǒyǐ ‘so’, they are different: an integrated subjectivity account of Mandarin RESULT connectives in conversation, microblog and newspaper discourse

Abstract In this study, we analyze the meaning and use of Mandarin causal connectives kějiàn ‘therefore/it can be seen that’, suǒyǐ ‘so’, yīncǐ ‘for this reason’, and yúshì ‘thereupon/as a result’ in terms of causality and subjectivity. We adopt an integrated approach to subjectivity and analyze the subjectivity profile of a causal construction in terms of three features: the propositional attitude of the consequent, the identity of the subject of consciousness (SoC), and the linguistic realization of the SoC. The investigation is based on natural discourse produced in fundamentally distinctive channels, namely, spontaneous conversation, microblogging, and formal writing. Compared to previous studies, the empirical foundation is therefore enlarged and more varied. The results show that these connectives differ systematically from each other with regard to the above three features, and that the differences remain robust across the three discourse types. The relative importance of each feature in characterizing the connectives is also determined. The propositional attitude appears to be the most important subjectivity feature, followed by the linguistic realization of the SoC and the identity of the SoC.

South Africa’s image as translated in Dutch-language media

This contribution first explores the position of Journalistic Translation Research within the discipline of Translation Studies and, subsequently, describes the relevance of relating it to imagological approaches. It presents a case study that analyses how journalistic discourse in current Dutch-language newspapers (both from the Netherlands and Belgium) represents South Africa(ns). Five recurring images and topical fields are distinguished. They do not only build the imageme, i.e. the imagological range of presentations for South Africa(ns) in Dutch-language journalistic representations, but also confirm the constructed character of national and cultural image-building.

The representation of the ‘refugee crisis’ and ‘sport’ in the German Press: an analysis of newspaper discourse

ABSTRACT – EMPIRICAL RESEARCH The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ was a highly mediatised event. Despite being considered an important engine for integration, the representation of sport within the media coverage on the ‘refugee crisis’ has never been scientifically reviewed. With the intention of closing this research gap, the present article explores the question: ‘How do German newspapers represent sport in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’?’ To answer this question, 1,840 articles were analysed using a template analysis and interpreted on the basis of foucauldian discourse theory. The analyses focussed on the discourse strands identified within six main themes: (1) Construction of the refugee athlete; (2) Refugees as threats or victims; (3) Engagement of the sport system; (4) Sport facilities as shelters; (5) Integration of refugees in/through sport; (6) Sport as a charitable purpose. The analysis of these strands of discourse shows that the sport theme is deeply embedded in that on the ‘refugee crisis’, but not bound to its development. While sport has the paradoxical potential of both oppressing and empowering individuals, this article focusses on how the sport-related discourse strands support the reproduction of cultural hegemony. Towards the discourse strands, the German press often drawn a distinction between the generous German ‘self’ and the powerless refugee ‘other’.

Multiple Correspondence Analysis, newspaper discourse and subregister

Abstract This article introduces a new method for grouping keywords and examines the extent to which it also allows analysts to explore the interaction of discourse and subregister. It uses the multivariate statistical technique, Multiple Correspondence Analysis, to reveal dimensions of keywords which co-occur across the texts of a corpus. These dimensions are then interpreted in terms of the discourses to which they contribute within the data, thus forming the basis of a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The approach is demonstrated through analysis of the discourses that are used to represent Muslims and Islam in a corpus of UK national newspaper articles published on these topics spanning 2010–2019. The approach reveals an interaction between discourse and subregister, hence this article argues for the need for (corpus-assisted) discourse analysts to account for subregister as a level of meaningful variation when analysing press discourse.