The newspaper “Babochka” (1829–1832) as a linguistic source

The article deals with the newspaper “Babochka” as an important source for philological research, which objectively reflects the linguistic processes of its time. Translated articles selected from leading periodicals in Europe and America, creatively revised by the authors, included the Russian reader in the world media space. A differential approach is used in the article that focuses primarily on the dynamic elements of the lexical and semantic system. The newspaper presents the innovations of the early 19th century, including borrowings, foreign language inclusions, complex adjectives formed in Russian, and dialect words. As a result of the analysis of the source, the emergence of new meanings for words already in use was noted, the dating of a number of new lexemes was clarified, and contexts for their semantization were identified. The work concludes that the rare words and rare word usage recorded in the texts of the newspaper “Babochka” can be considered as valuable materials for historical lexicology.

Features of speech influence in advertising educational services on the Internet

The article is devoted to the features of speech influence in online advertising of educational services. Educational advertising is a type of advertising aimed at promoting educational services, which aims to form the addressee’s belief in the need to use the services of the advertised educational institution. It is argued that the specificity of pedagogical advertising discourse is determined by the goal setting, the importance of the offer to the recipient, the characteristics of the advertised object and the difficulty of carrying out manipulative influence due to the verifiability of the result. Informational, admonishing, and reminiscent ads are highlighted. Pedagogical advertising is characterized by specific features of methods of speech influence and manipulative tactics. Among the methods of speech influence, the most effective is the method of persuasion. No less important is the role played by the methods of inducement, suggestion and imitation. A characteristic feature of educational advertising is the active use of logical arguments when creating arguments. Using emotional arguments helps to increase the impact of an advertisement’s message. By influencing consumer’s emotions, the addresser offers not only educational services, but also positive emotions. When building an emotional argument in educational advertising, emotional and emotional-evaluative vocabulary is used primarily to arouse positive emotions associated with an educational institution in the recipient. It has been determined that the most frequent means of speech influence in pedagogical advertising are positive evaluative vocabulary and vocabulary with emotional and expressive coloring, a verb in the imperative mood, rhetorical means of expression, and above all tropes and figures. The article reveals that advertising texts in the educational sphere have a large number of expressive syntactic constructions and rhetorical figures (first of all, repetition, question-answer constructions, rhetorical appeal, rhetorical exclamation, antithesis). Manipulative speech influence in educational advertising is not frequent. In the pedagogical advertising text, two main manipulative tactics are distinguished: manipulations based on weaknesses and manipulations based on needs.

Thematic organization of instructional texts as a linguistic basis for the acquisition of knowledge by an intelligent agent

The article examines the thematic organization of instructional texts in the aspect of problems relevant to work on the creation of a cognitive assistant. The purpose of the assistant is to provide a user with the necessary information to follow the rules of a particular scenario to successfully achieve a goal according to the search query. The query containing certain keywords, further specified as the task being solved, is focused on a detailed set of topics which mark the subject areas reflected in the scenario. The authors of the article provide a review of some linguistic works devoted to the issues of theme-rhematic structuring of a produced text and its compression within the limits of keywords. The importance of the description of the text’s thematic chains, to obtain the detailed objective information on its thematic structure, is emphasized. When comparing the list of keywords identified by the automatic system TextApplianсe in a collection of Internet-extracted instructional texts retrieved from the Internet with the results of hand-held analysis of these texts, to determine the place of various nominative units in the text’s thematic organization, the authors consider the most significant characteristics of a keyword shown in different nominative units to varying degrees. This is a high indicator of a text identifier, content capacity, and communicative significance of a word or a substantive phrase as a marker of important information for a recipient. Defining keywords in whole instructional texts and in relatively independent text fragments (subtexts) that describe individual stages of the user’s goal achievement (for example, the stages of selecting a car, its inspection, making a transaction, car registration) makes it possible to improve the quality of scenario identification in the Network. Extracting keywords along with their context allows for the creation of a recommendations’ database for users automatically. The significance of the theme-rhematic text structure analysis, as a sign for its modeling in the sign picture of the world, is revealed.

Meganarrative as an instrument of structuring media information

The article introduces the scientific concept of meganarrative, substantiates the necessity of this term in the metalanguage of media linguistics and discusses the potential of using it as an instrument for structuring mass data in media space. The author aims to determine the linguistic resources used to create a meganarrative as a polydiscursive unit that brings together thematically related narratives expressing authors’ perception and evaluation of an event described. The possibility of using the proposed concept of meganarrative is analyzed on the example of an institutional-type political statement published by the U.S. Department of Defense. The tasks of the research consist in revealing the features of a meganarrative in media communication, establishing the causes of conflicting interests and finding linguistic means of resolving conflict situations. The study makes use of the methods of narrative and discourse analysis, contextual method, componential analysis of meanings of key lexical units and methods of linguacultural interpretation of linguistic peculiarities of a meganarrative. The research makes it possible to draw a number of conclusions: a meganarrative is understood as a polydiscursive formation which serves as a transtextual means of structuring media streams and ensuring a platform for intertextual dialogue between narrative participants of media communication; narrative techniques are shown to make an impact on the character of describing events and evaluating them in mass media; a meganarrative is shown to play an important role in uniting those who belong to the ‘US’ side, enhancing confrontation with the ‘THEM’ block and continuing rivalry with the ‘OTHER’ opponents.

On the question of speech portraits of political propagandists

Based on the analysis of the oral public speech of popular publicists (S. A. Mikheev and I. N. Panarin) working in electronic media and the Internet, the article attempts to characterize the stylistic and semantic originality of modern Russian pro-government propaganda. The dependence of the nature of the linguistic features of propaganda on such factors as the personality of the propagandist, the scope of his activities, and the nature of the transmission is established. It is shown that the personal qualities of Mikheev is conditioned by such features of his speech as emotionality, exceeding the permissible volume level, and careless pronunciation style, while Professor Panarin is characterized by an academic manner of speech with its inherent consideration of the opposite point of view, argumentation, and respect for the audience. It is claimed that the influence of the sphere of activity (Mikheev works in electronic media, such as Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, the radio program Iron Logic, Panarin conducts an analytical program Igor Panarin. World Politics on the YouTube channel) is found in taking into account the composition and request of the audience to which the propaganda is directed. Television discussion allows rudeness, verbal aggression, reduced vocabulary, political banter, logic of the absurd, direct insults, and threats to opponents. Analytical transmission involves the strategic forecasting of events filled with the metaphysics of propaganda, the creation of mythologies, the use of allegories, and hints. It is proved that despite the almost opposite stylistic format, the propaganda discourse of Mikheev and Panarina is characterized by common dominant semantic categories, such as traditional family values, religiosity, conservatism, protection of the interests of the state, humanistic maximalism, and the historical continuity of Russia.

The specifics of the vlog audience and its influence on the process of retial communication

The demand for vlogs (video blogs) in the modern world stipulates the relevance of this work: having turned into a full-fledged media space, vlogs are steadily beginning to win back the position of leading mass media from television. The article studies the audience of vlogs as the most important factor which determines the model of communication of a vlogger and the final design of the media product as a whole and its issues in particular. The sources for the research are popular vlogs of the Runet which make it possible to trace distinguishing features of the vlog audience in comparison with the TV audience and to point out its similarities with the target audience in advertising communication. The retail communication act itself, which is initiated by a vlogger, demonstrates the similarity with the AIDMA model. As a result of the conducted analysis the author is able to make several conclusions: 1) about specific featuresof the audience of the vlog; 2) about the influence of the factor of the addressee on the vloggers’ work; 3) about different means of influence used by a vlogger to retain the audience’s attention and involve the audience in post-communication activity; 4) about the singularity of retail communication in vlogs. The active position of the addressee of communication in the virtual media space, the opportunity and the necessity of interactive communication for vlog promotion induce vloggers to constantly resolve the objectives of attracting and retaining the attention of subscribers, audience augmentation, and elaboration of topics for postcommunication activity of the audience. The vlog format, which is aimed at the creation and dissemination of media texts with complicated semiotics, enables and forces a vlogger to apply the widest range of verbal and nonverbal means of communication.

The language of folk dream-divination in the “Collection of materials for describing the terrain and tribes of the Caucasus” (1881–1915): The collection of M. A. Kharlamov

The article discusses the linguistic features of folklore texts of dream-divination published by Mikhail Kharlamov in the popular journal Collection of materials for the description of the area and tribes of the Caucasus, published in Tiflis from 1881 to 1915. The regional and all-Russian features of the unique folklore collection, which also reflected the individual characteristics of the collecting style of Kharlamov himself who was one of the regular authors of this journal, are described. The ethnographic and local lore orientation of most of the publications and the patronage from the Caucasian educational district contributed to the fact that the journal was perceived as a serious educational publication, therefore the language of its main materials can be characterized as clear and simple, and the style as truly popular science in modern terminology. It should be noted that when documenting some folklore texts, there is a “forcible ennobling” of folk speech when, for example, in the recording of dream-divination for the collector or editor, there are clearly literary lexical inclusions, which creates the effect of a stylistic seam in the text of such a recording. Despite this, the constancy and stability of the basic symbolic conditioning between the sign of a dream and its prognosis is revealed, which, as a rule, have deep mythological foundations. The general Russian folklore unity of the materials included in this collection is also emphasized, which manifested itself in the organization of the dream-divination text, its lexical composition, and grammatical form.

Pitch as a business PR-text: Communicative and pragmatic aspect

The article discusses pitching as a communication technology and a pitch as a business PRtext. For a more complete and correct definition of the concepts of a pitch and pitching, the semantics of the multi-valued pitch lexeme underlying them are analyzed. The types of pitching are described by the field of activity, by the intended purpose and by the time of the presentation. The subject of the study was the textual features of the investment pitch as a PR communication tool. The main purpose of the work is to analyze the structural and content components of the investment pitch in the communicative and pragmatic aspect, including the characteristics of the addresser, addressee, object, goal, functions, etc. The material for the study was selected using the method of random sampling of 28 video recordings of pitch presentations presented on the foreign TV shows Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den, posted on the social network YouTube. The analysis of the material showed that the text of the pitch is based on the principle of combining standard and expression, noted by V. G. Kostomarov, in relation to the language of the newspaper. The tendency towards standardization is manifested in the typical structure of the pitch, the tendency towards expressiveness — in the use of certain verbal and paraverbal means, with the help of which the addresser seeks to express a subjective attitude not only to the content of speech, but also to the addressee, influencing his consciousness and stimulating him to make the necessary decisions. Based on the identified differential features, the definition of an investment pitch is proposed. It is concluded that the investment pitch can be included in a number of other proposals coming from the PR subject — proposals for cooperation, commercial proposals and proposals for sponsorship, calling it an offer for investors.

Open access to global health information in mass media: Specialized translation and Russian-German-Spanish terminology

The situation triggered by the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the need to simplify medical terminology for better understanding by the public. The goal of specialized communication on medical topics is to more efficiently transfer and assimilate information that is important to human health, which has become literally vital in the times of COVID-19. Such circumstances lead to the fact that medical terminology is no longer the exclusive prerogative of the professional vocabulary of medical personnel, but is already more and more integrated into the vocabulary of everyday use, and is also widely used in mass media. A cognitive approach to terminology helps to extract specialized knowledge encoded in terms, simplifies specialized translation and contributes to mass communication at a global level. This study, using the example of Russian-German-Spanish medical terminology, demonstrates the fact that an effective and intuitive presentation of specialized concepts helps to correctly apply international terminology, and most importantly, allows its target audience to assimilate the knowledge behind it in a structured form. This cognitive approach to medical terminology serves public health purposes by facilitating the communication between doctor and patient, on the success of which the life and health of society depends. It also argued that the correct interlanguage terminology management facilitates the constructive exchange of experience and cooperation between doctors, specialists, scientists, healthcare organizations and specialized translators, whose joint work at the global level is now especially necessary for medicine.

The post-truth phenomenon in coverage of the gender-based violence issue in Spain’s pandemic media space (on the material of ABC)

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of post–truth in the modern media space, particularly in Spain. For the first time, the neologism “post-truth” was recorded in the explanatory dictionaries of the Spanish language in 2017. It was nominated for the “word of the year”. Interest in studying this phenomenon is growing every year as post-truth has become an integral part of the modern media space around the world. The phenomenon is widely studied in modern science. The research material for the article is the daily social and political newspaper ABC, which is considered one of the leading publications related to quality press in Spain. The author examines the phenomenon of post-truth on the material of newspaper publications devoted to the problem of violence against women during the state of emergency in Spain (from March 14 to June 21) due to COVID-19. The analysis of the published material in the newspaper (more than 250 articles) showed that journalists are actively using linguistic techniques of manipulative influence on the reader — exaggeration of facts or their distortion/inaccuracy, use of affective vocabulary, vivid and memorable phraseological units, epithets, comparisons, reference to unreliable sources and appeal to civil liability. All these linguistic methods contribute to the formation of a distorted picture of the actual situation in Spanish society regarding gender-based violence. The author revealed that the statistics in the newspaper do not correspond to the official data. All this testifies to the phenomenon of post-truth in the modern media space in Spain. The findings confirm that modern journalism plays on people’s emotions and feelings to attract the reader.