scholarly journals Humour as a strategy for news delivery: the case of Meduza

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktoria Vladimirovna Vasileva ◽  
Liubov Yurevna Ivanova

In this article, humour is viewed as a strategic resource for informing in media discourse. It is analyzed through the case of “Evening Meduza”, a Russian-language nightly newsletter, received via email or Telegram messenger. A media linguistics analysis of polycode hypermedia text is used to identify communicative linguistic means, contributing to a comic reinterpretation of news on the paratextual, intratextual and visual-illustrative level. News messages in the newsletter are created in the format of compressed “packagings” (a term borrowed from Chafe) with embedded links, following which an addressee goes to the page with source text or concomitant informational resources. Humour is analyzed in packagings as well as in whole text and paratext blocks. Humorous means are revealed in three vectors of analysis: empathy in packaging texts, paratextual focus interaction, and news visualization. The change of narrative perspectives in text packages allows the authors to shift the focus of contrast within a newspiece and create humorous content while showing empathy to readers with different presuppositional expectations. The author’s signature always includes a prepositive ironic addition (attribution) that highlights one of the issue’s news elements and forces the audience to reread the newsletter in order to understand the semantic relation. Subheadings create a comic contrast, focusing on individual parts of the reference content while preparing the reader to perceive the news of the day interconnectedly. A mandatory humorous component in the block “And – picture” was found to show the news event in a visual semiotic code using a demotivator style that expresses a pun.

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (8) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
M. I. Kuznetsova

One of the goals of the Russian language course in the primary school is the formation of the communicative literacy. The content of the course should be aimed at understanding the wealth of linguistic means by primary school children; the formation of the ability to detect a violation of linguistic norms and the inadequacy of the linguistic means used in the speech situation; the accumulation of the experience in choosing of linguistic means in accordance with the peculiarities of the speech situation; the creation of oral and written texts that meet the criteria of content, connectivity, compliance with the norms of the Russian literary language. The article considers the classification of exercises that contribute to the formation of communicative literacy. The author gives the examples of exercises where the student acts in different roles: the student is an observer of the speech situation and analyzes the adequacy of the choice of linguistic means; the student is a direct participant in the given speech situation and makes a choice of language facilities; the student is offered to create the speech situation himself, to independently construct an oral and written text.


Yazykoznaniye ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 82-91
Author(s):  
A.Yu. KHAKHALEVA

The article discusses the main approaches to studying the modern Russian-language PR-discourse that represents a relatively new and actively developing sphere of communication. First of all, the researchers of the Russian-language PR-discourse analyze its lexical composition. In particular, they consider the ways of adapting the English-language PR-terms that play an important role in reflecting new objects of extralinguistic reality. Moreover, the linguistic means of this type of discourse are studied from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics. The works in this area emphasize the importance of such way of speech impact as suggestion and the corresponding pragmatic methods that is determined by the manipulative character of the Russian-language PR-discourse. In the light of this peculiarity, the linguists are also interested in the process of mythologization that consists in distorting the connections between the objects of reality and is aimed at creating the positive image of the subject of PR-communication.


2019 ◽  

The paper, in its first part, outlines the Slovak research into audiovisual translation (AVT) from the 1950s up to the present, paying attention to the most important scholars as well as publications that helped to shape and establish the discipline within Slovak translation studies. It is based on the ongoing bibliographical research and the historical explanation mapping the development of AVT research in Slovakia by I. Tyšš – e.g. his publication Myslenie o audiovizuálnom preklade na Slovensku: 1952 – 2017 (Thinking on Audiovisual Translation in Slovakia: 1952 – 2017, 2018) – as well as on own findings covering the last two years. In more detail, the first part of the paper highlights that it was primarily thanks to a younger generation of translation studies scholars – especially E. Perez (née Janecová), L. Paulínyová (née Kozáková) and J. Želonka – that in 2012 the Slovak research into AVT finally became systematic. The second part of the paper is devoted to the phenomenon of the so-called second-hand translation of originally Russian audiovisual works that may be observed in Slovakia in recent years. The questionable nature of this phenomenon is stressed since the Russian language is not a language of limited diffusion and definitely not remote in relation to the Slovak cultural space. On the example of two documentary films – Под властью мусора (Held Captive by Rubbish, 2013) and Дух в движении (Spirit in Motion, 2015), the author discusses and analyses the problems that occur when translating originally Russian AV works into Slovak through the English language, i.e. the negative shifts resulting from mis-/overinterpretation of the source text, translation by omission, wrong order of dialogues, cultural specifics and incorrect transcription.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
L. Krajčovičová

The goal of this article is to analyze the principles and methods of using the precedent semantics of literary onyms in the process of metaphorization of the high-profile international event Brexit in contemporary (2016–2021) Russian-language media discourse. The research material encompasses media discourse, from which fragments of online versions of Russian-language newspaper and journalistic texts of different genres and socio-political orientation have been selected. As an additional source of empirical material, the author uses the newspaper subcorpus of the national corpus of the Russian language, as well as the Russian-language subcorpus of the international databases Eastview and Aranea. In order to achieve the main goal of the research the author uses the method of continuous sampling, methods of corpus linguistics, methods of content analysis, as well as narrative and contextual analysis (of fragments of media discourse), linguocultural analysis of texts, methods of conceptual analysis and interpretation. Thanks to the use of methods of corpus linguistics, more than 400 contextual realizations of the use of precedent names in connotative metaphorical meaning (in connection with Brexit) have been collected and analyzed. The article presents only the most expressive and most common examples of metaphorization of precedent names when describing the discursive event of Brexit. On the basis of the analysis, the author concludes that the so-called universal-precedent phenomena (mainly of English but also European literature) prevail in the process of metaphorization compared to those of Russian literature, which are extremely rare. In the paper’s study, the author also focuses on the fact that precedent names in the process of metaphorization undergo desemanticization (simplification of the meaning) and become distinctive cultural stereotypes. Initial hypothesis that the intertextuality of the Russian media discourse has a pronounced literary-centric character is confirmed.


Author(s):  
Viacheslav D. Shevchenko

This article is devoted to the analysis of the cognitive and pragmatic factors of food representation in media discourse, as well as the peculiarities of the linguistic means of this representation. The study used the methodology of cognitive semantics and discourse analysis, including the method of cognitive modeling, the method of discourse analysis, the method of pragmalinguistic analysis, observation and description techniques. Cognitive and pragmatic aspects of food representation, in our opinion, belong to the extra-linguistic components of discourse. Filling the components of the cognitive model with certain content by means of linguistic units leads to the realization of the pragmatic goal of the journalist. For example, the component CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OBJECT (FOOD) through the media text is filled with information about color, composition, presence of additives, etc., which allows the reader to form a certain attitude towards food, which is discussed in the article.


Author(s):  
Elena G. Tareva ◽  
Boris V. Tarev

The article represents the analysis of individual styles of summary writing with the aim to describe them, and verify the methods of their defining (diagnosis). The purpose of the paper is to determine the scientific status, and also to substantiate the pragmatic function of individual summary writing styles in order to improve the quality of students’ preparation for this type of written activity in the process of learning foreign languages. The main goal of the authors is to prove that the individual style of summary writing is conditioned by socio-cultural and personal factors that influence the ability to perceive and process the source text and generate a secondary text — a summary. Materials and methods. As a methodological basis, the authors rely on the learner-centered and intercultural approaches to teaching. The solution of research problems was ensured through the use of a set of interrelated methods: theoretical (analysis of literature, of available domestic and foreign experience), general scientific (classification, differentiation, comparison, generalization), as well as empirical (experimental work, content analysis of activity products — summaries, statistical data processing). The material for research is summaries which are regarded as products of written speech by Russian-speaking and English-speaking students of an economics university. Results. The research identifies and characterizes lingvocognitive styles of summary writing specific for English and Russian language speakers, that reflect nationally and personally conditioned approaches to analytical and synthetic processing of information. We prove experimentally and statistically reliably the fact that Russian-speaking students are characterized by differentiating, scanning style of summary writing, while English-speaking students — by integrating, fragmenting style of summary writing. The systematization of the results of the summaries’ content analysis has demonstrated the use by the learners of their personal experience for perception, processing of the source text and in the generation of the text of a summary. Conclusions. The obtained results help to optimize the process of preparing students for writing summaries in the conditions of intercultural communication, taking into account the individual style of summary writing


Author(s):  
V.G. Morgun

The article provides a comprehensive study of the mechanism of functioning of language tools in the process of text formation, and presents the results of studying the image of the ‘scientist’s spirit’ in modern media discourse on the example of Chinese and Russian news articles. The analysis of empirical material has shown that when representing the spirit of a scientist, general (epithet, metaphor, hyperbole/litotes, lexical repetition, syntactic parallelism, gradation, homogeneous parts of the sentence, parenthetic constructions) and particular for Chinese media discourse (comparison, inversion, parcellation, question-and-answer form of presentation) linguistic means prevail.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-114
Author(s):  
Anna N. Mishchenko

The article is devoted to the study of precedent units with the source «ancient Greek mythology», which have the potential to broadcast the linguistic and cultural features of a particular community, the recognition of which influences the success of intercultural communication. The work provides a comprehensive analysis of the precedent units included in the cycle «The History of the Golden Fleece», namely «Argonauts», «Golden Fleece», «Jason» in the texts of Russian-language media. In the article the author argues that the change in the semantics of constructions occurs not only at the denotative, but also at the connotative, pragmatic level, where the studied precedent units acquire new semantic features. The analysis of the functioning features of the precedent units included in the «History of the Golden Fleece» cycle allows us to establish the linguistic mechanisms of their «deployment» in the media discourse and come to the conclusion about the specifics of the fragment of the worldview, fixed in mythologized precedent phenomena.


Author(s):  
Elżbieta Tabakowska

The following text concentrates on the presence of the translator, who plays a multitude of roles in the life of translatology, e.g. “transparent glass” or “efficient interface,” depending on the perspective. The translator, currently seen as an object of analysis by theorists of translation, is treated as a person entitled to make decisions, conscious decisions, and who becomes a source whose translation may be interpreted. Due to the inevitability of the translator’s presence in the translated text, it is worth looking at the source text through the translator’s eyes and analyzing his or her decisions. The theoretical background of this article is Langacker’s model pertaining to the choice of linguistic means that convey the language-user’s intentions best; Lakoff’s theory of metaphors; and George Lüdi’s theory of marks left by the translator in the translated text. The analyzed texts have been taken from the different translations of the Bible such as: the Jakub Wujek Bible, New International Version, and the Millennium Bible. The analysis proves that the translator as a subject is a source of research whose direction has changed in the recent years.


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