Secondary Somatic Nominations in Media Texts Covering Economy, Business and Politics Spheres

The article set out to reveal the specific features of secondary somatic nominations in media texts in the spheres of economy, business, and politics. The significance of the problem under study is implied by a need for elucidating the evolution of language consciousness by shedding light on how corporeal lexis in the Russian language is involved in verbalization of reality in the spheres in question. The study demonstrated that secondary somatic nominations evolve due to transformation of the meaning of a linguistic unit, whose primary meaning is associated with various aspects of the human body existence. This transformation of the meaning seems to be a common way of denotating reality in the texts under investigation. We specified the sources of somatic expansion, whose semantic content is most frequently redefined in the thematic fields in question. We also identified the denotation areas (conceptual fields) where corporeal lexis is used in their secondary meanings. Our research demonstrated considerable pragmatic potential of the texts including somatic linguistic units. We established that their evaluative content results from axiological connotations associated with various corporeal concepts in the Russian linguoculture. Their expressiveness is achieved due to imagery created by unusual contextualization of somatic linguistic units. The results of the current study made it possible to establish the ways of transforming the meanings of somatic linguistic units in the investigated spheres in the Russian language. Transformation of the meanings of somatic lexis occurs by using metaphors, metonymy, similes, irony, epithets, oxymoron, gradation, language game, etc.

Problem of objectivity of media coverage and TV-tickers published in main news programs on Polsat and TVP

The article contains the results of the analysis of TV-tickers published in the main editions of the Wydarzenia broadcast in the three months preceding the elections to the Polish parliament in 2019. The study showed to what extent the language used in the messages served a descriptive and to what extent - a persuasive function. In the analyzed period more than half of the texts announcing the reports were not intended to influence the perception of the events described in the materials. The results were presented in the context of the critical assessment of Wiadomości contained in the 2018 Rada Języka Polskiego report. The author's considerations are complemented by a reflection on difficulties related to meeting the expectations of mass media recipients in terms of journalists' observance of objectivity when creating media texts.

Sport texts in teaching polish as a foreign language

In this article I present the potential of media sport texts in terms of their utilisation in Polish as a foreign language classes. I discuss various definitions of text to indicate that it can constitute not only a linguistic concept but can also carry a communal element, a state of one’s spirit if you will. Next, I indicate the role of media texts in foreign language teaching. Further, I discuss the role of culture, popular culture in particular, in foreign language teaching. I also reference studies which have indicated the differences in how the same media genres are constructed in various linguistic contexts. My original proposal applies to sport texts, be they broadcast on the radio, television, or the internet. I indicate their potential in foreign language teaching and specific areas in which they may be applied. I conclude by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of utilising sport-themed media texts in Polish as a foreign language classes.

Formation of Psychological Media Competence of Specialists in the Field of Advertising and Public Relations

The importance of media competence research is connected with the totality of media communications; its psychological component is necessary for a person to understand the peculiarities of media influence and is, at the same time, poorly studied. For specialists in the field of advertising and public relations, psychological media competence (PMC) is of particular importance, since their activities involve the creation of an attractive product for the audience, while not violating the psychological safety of consumers. This determines the relevance of the presented research, the task of which was to analyze the components of psychological media competence among students. The study was conducted using the semantic differential (SD) method and a questionnaire methodology compiled by the author, which allows assessing the ability of a person to determine the psychological characteristics of media texts. Factor analysis, nonparametric Mann-Whitney and Kraskal-Wallis criteria were used for processing. The program developed by the author and tested in the course of the formative experiment is presented, it is aimed at increasing students’ PMC as of future specialists in the field of advertising and PR. 110 people participated in the study. A low level of students’ PMC was revealed. According to the analysis of the results of the experiment, a judgment on the effectiveness of the experimental program aimed at the development of psychological media competence, in particular, the skills of psychological analysis of media texts, is substantiated.

Authentic media texts in the professional training of students studying international relations

Introduction. The article examines the problem of using authentic media texts in the professional foreign language instruction of students studying international relations. The purpose of the article is to identify the main advantages and controversial aspects of using foreign media texts, to propose a step-by-step algorithm for their analysis, as well as recommendations aimed at neutralizing their impact on students. Materials and Methods. For this study, the following methods were used: analysis of scholarly and theoretical literature and authentic teaching materials, survey and questionnaires, analysis of empirical data and their systematization. The empirical study was conducted over two years. The research sample consisted of university students from nine groups (n = 79) studying advanced German as a second foreign language at MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Results. The article summarizes the experience of studying the process of professionally oriented foreign language teaching, built on the basis of authentic media texts. The advantages of their application are revealed: the texts of foreign language media are available, relevant, and diverse in style and genre characteristics. They are considered as a source of cultural and professional-relevant information. Their implementation has a positive effect on the development of all language skills and types of speech, affects the development of verbal and non-verbal speech, and increases motivation. The negative aspects include the following: foreign texts often have an ideological orientation, consequently, they are able to influence the recipient’s opinion, their consciousness and subconsciousness, manipulate ideas about events and phenomena of the surrounding reality. The proposed algorithm for analyzing the media text includes the following stages: evaluating the mass media, analyzing the subject matter of the text, considering the historical period of its writing, identifying the main realities, hypotheses and argumentation of the author, and ideologized structures. The final stages are comparing the source with texts in a foreign or native language, building a personal position, and mastering lexical and grammatical means of expression. Conclusions. As a result of the study, with the aim of using the advantages and leveling the negative impact, recommendations were proposed and an algorithm for analyzing the media text was developed. The implementation of this algorithm allows students to preserve their cultural identity, and prepare for professional communication.

Multimodality as a Communicative Tool for Social Engagement and Reform

This article acknowledges the viability of multimodal projects in first-year college-level writing courses in accordance with the evolution of composition pedagogy over the past forty years. Since the 1982 publication of Hairston’s article “The Winds of Change” forecasting the end of the then-ubiquitous current-traditional approach, composition pedagogy has undergone paradigm shifts from process to post-process theory and from textual to digital modes of composition. Inspired by Goodwin’s (2020) research on students’ multimodal responses to local community issues, I developed a public media project for my first-year writing course for which students created media texts addressing local, regional, national, and global issues of their choosing. The project synthesizes the public and interpretative dimensions of writing identified by post-process scholars with elements of multimodality and civic engagement to help students understand how public media texts raise social awareness of current issues and mobilize community efforts toward unified resolution of such issues.

Health Promotion Discourse in Modern Media (Based on the Texts of the National Health Service, United Kingdom)

Health promotion discourse is a relevant object of linguistic analysis as in its texts verbal and non-verbal means of communication are used to make a pragmatic impact on the largest possible audience. This article aimed to identify the characteristic features of health promotion discourse in modern British media. The material included texts on obesity published on the official website of the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom, which represents government policy in the health sector. The study applied the methods of descriptive interpretive analysis, as well as contextual, and discourse analysis. This paper defines health promotion discourse as a communicative interaction on disease prevention issues and health awareness. In addition, it indicates the main features of media texts and their implementation in health promotion discourse. The authors found that NHS media texts on health promotion are characterized by common features of media discourse: a specific topic-based structure, an active usage of visual and graphic techniques, as well as multimodality, interactivity, and coverage of burning issues (health-related, in this case). Moreover, these texts have features inherent in media texts of online medical discourse, such as linguistic and therapeutic orientation (reflected in speech acts of advice expressed with varying degrees of categoricalness), targeted inclusiveness, and stylistic convergence (mixing of different functional styles). In addition, on the basis of the material studied, the paper identifies the following strategies specific to health promotion media texts: personal choice, developing trust in the author, and creating an image of the author as a friend. These strategies act as tools to achieve the main function of health promotion discourse, i.e. to influence the readers in order to maintain their health and prevent diseases.

Mass Media and Conflicts: Media-Geographical Studies

This article presents the results of media geographical studies of publications of American and European mass media covering conflicts and crises of different levels and scales (global, international, regional, and local). Through the prism of media-geographical views on the processes of media reality formation, the author examined mass media approaches of different countries on the topic of coverage. The research methodology included media metric analysis, rank analysis (rank distributions of the popularity of semantic categories for Internet audiences around the world), quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media texts and analysis of publications according to the criteria of the theory of peaceful journalism. The results of the rank analysis illustrated the possibilities of using this method to study the mental landscapes of different countries and regions. Special attention was paid to the interpretation of meanings and their transformation in space and time, as well as to the spatial analysis of big data (based on Google Trends statistics) with an emphasis on the dynamics of changes in media behavior and media consumption of Internet audiences in different time periods. The empirical basis for content analysis was made up of publications of online versions of 10 American and European mass media in English, German and French of 2020. The main result of the study: the majority of media texts — about 80 % — do not contribute to the search for ways of peaceful settlement of conflicts (they abound in emotionally colored vocabulary, negative markers, categorical assessments, journalists do not make attempts to deeply analyze the situation, synthesize different positions and search for creative non-violent ways to resolve contradictions). Mass media publications often become a source of increasing tension in society, the parties of conflicts are represented as antagonists in media texts, journalists fail to establish a connection between them and bridge the gap between their interests. The results of a comparative analysis of media texts according to the criteria of the theory of peaceful journalism allowed us to classify the main approaches for the mass media conflicts covering and develop a number of proposals and recommendations to use in journalistic practice.

Emergent impoliteness and persuasive emotionality in Polish media discourses

The focus of the paper is to identify and discuss cases of what we call emergent impoliteness and persuasive emotionality based on selected types of discourse strategies in Polish media which contribute to increasingly high negative emotionality in audiences and to the radicalization of language and attitudes when addressing political opponents. The role and function of emotional discourse are particularly foregrounded to identify its persuasive role in media discourses and beyond. Examples discussed are derived from current Polish media texts. The materials are collected from the large Polish monitor media corpus monco.frazeo.pl (Pęzik 2020). The analysis is conducted in terms of quantitative corpus tools (Pęzik 2012, 2014), concerning emotive and media discourse approaches (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Wilson 2013, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2015, 2017a, 2017b). The analysis includes a presentation of the ways mass media construe events (Langacker 1987/1991) in terms of their ideological framing, understood as particular imposed/constructed event models and structures (cf. Gans 1979). Special attention is paid to the negative axiological evaluation of people and events in terms of mostly implicitly persuasive and offensive discourse, including the role emotion clusters of harm, hurt and offence, anger and contempt play in the media persuasive tactics. The research outcomes provide a research basis and categorization of types of emergent impoliteness and persuasive emotionality, which involve implicit persuasion directed at negative emotionality raising with the media public, as identifiedin the analyzed media texts.