СОВРЕМЕННАЯ МЕДИАРЕЧЬ: КАТЕГОРИАЛЬНЫЕ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ

Научная статья
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.9.22
Выпуск: № 1 (9), 2017
PDF

Аннотация

Статья посвящена характеристике категориальных особенностей современной медиаречи. Она антропоцентрична, то есть отражает особенности авторского мировосприятия, трактовки событий и явлений, направлена не к среднестатистическому россиянину, а по крайней мере к представителю той или иной страты, к личности. Медиаречь нашего столетия интерактивна, диалогична (диалогизирована) и потенциально гипертекстуальна, она отличается стилистическим многообразием, по-разному, в зависимости от социальной ориентации издания, оформляется в культурно-речевом плане. Ей присущи и такие качества, как полифоничность, поликодовость, визуализация. Медиадискурс нашего времени нарративен: журналист в своем материале творит собственную картину мира, рассказывает свою историю о бытии, в которой отражаются его когнитивные, аксиологические, творческие предпочтения.

Media language is one of the most important objects of linguistic research. Therefore the existing scientific paradigm formed a special discipline named media linguistics. This term was introduced into scientific use by Tatjana G. Dobrosklonskaya: in her book "Media linguistics: a systematic approach to the study of media language: the modern English media language" [3] such issues as theoretical foundations of media linguistics, categorical features of media texts, linguistic features of main types of media texts, are discussed as well as cognitive / cultural aspects of media text.

Media linguistics (and media stylistics like a part of it) develops the problem of a relation between their own linguistic and extralinguistic principles of creating media texts, explores the specifics of their speech deployment, proposes a typology of media formats with social, genre and the intentional-modal perspectives, describes the conceptual sphere of  media texts, its semantic and stylistic features (see the works on media stylistics highlighting the role of author's position in a speech organization of media texts (G. Y. Solganik, L. G. Kaida, L. M. Maidanova, N. S. Tsvetova, T. V. Shmeleva); representing their typology (L. R. Duskaeva, V. I. Konkov, I. P. Lysakova, S. O. Kalganova, L. M. Maidanova, etc.); presenting the specificity of speech researches in mass media, especially its architectonic (N. S. Bolotnova, L. R. Duskaeva, L. G. Kaida, E. V. Kakorina, V. I. Konkov, M. A. Kormilitsyna, N. A. Kornilova, N. A. Kuzmina, V. A. Salimovsky, S. V. Svetana, A. P. Skovorodnikov, E. V. Chepkina, T. V. Chernyshova); developing a system of concepts typical for media texts (E. S. Abramova, E. G. Malysheva, O. V. Orlova); describing the world  picture reflected in modern media discourse (I. V. Annenkova); considering different means of enhancing the expressiveness of media texts (A. P. Skovorodnikov, G. V. Bobrovskaya, G. A. Kopnina, M. A. Kormilitsyna, T. I. Krasnova). Prominent works deal with the analysis of author's style in media discourse (N. S. Bolotnova, M. A. Kormilitsyna); the characteristics of polycode texts (E. S. Kara-Murza, N. N. Volskaya), propose the intentional-modal analysis of media texts (N. I. Klushina); analyze advertising texts from the point of view of semiotics (A. N. Baranov, E. S. Kara-Murza, M. V. Gorbanevsky, T. V. Chernyshova); state the theoretical aspects of speech in electronic media (I. A. Veschikova); identify speech culture basis for an organization of texts (N. D. Bessarabova, N. S. Lopukhina, V. V. Slavkin, O. B. Sirotinina, T. I. Surikova); characterize Internet publications in a blogosphere – E. V.Kakorina, M. Yu. Sidorova, I. B. Aleksandrova, T. B. Karpova).

By definition of Yu. N. Karaulov, modern media language is а "planetary stream of consciousness" [4, p. 15], which contains elements of different functional styles. This stream of consciousness is created by traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television and radio), online versions of print publications or radio and TV channel and electronic network media. Nowadays modern information field also includes the "citizen journalism", which takes a form of moblogging or blogging. These relatively new forms of mass communication – moblog (mobile phone log – diary on a mobile phone) and blog (derived from web log it means an internet diary) – occupy an important place in a system of mass communication of the XXI century. A number of blogs-thousanders now gained equal rights with mass media.

Citizen journalism is an important part of modern communication landscape. Nowadays moblogging is an important form of getting of video plots on a number of leading television channels, which work on a 24-hour broadcast. This method of gathering information is used by such world famous media companies as the BBC News Interactive, Bluffton Today, the IFRA website. The founder of this form of journalism was Ted Turner, who formulated the basic principle of television -   international news around the clock, in real time with maximum involvement of reports from the scene. The concept of news exclusivity also predetermined CNN slogans: News is the main product of CNN, CNN is a news, Be the first to know. In Russia this principle works primarily on TV channel Life. Reporters of this mass media often are the first to learn about incidents and other events, and their information and "picture" are represented in various electronic media. Such peculiarity of the channel is not only based on a large staff of own correspondents, but also the fact that Life is ready to buy plots that can be shot on a mobile cameraphone by eyewitnesses, who watched important social events. Similar news politics is typical to other leading TV channels, for example The First, Russia, etc. Thus, any person who managed to offer an interesting and important video is able to become a reporter, to make his own contribution to modern mass communication.

In Russia, many traditional print periodicals (Novaya Gazeta, Argumenty i Facty, MK etc.) also place blogs and moblogs on their websites. Their authors are not only media professionals but also people engaged in other spheres of work. This cooperation with non-professional journalists allows to cover news of the day, to make a monitoring of socially significant topics that are selected in the result of a census message: the more interesting for readers the is the theme, the more relevant messages are reprinted in the blog of a media.

Moblogs are not media in the full meaning of the word – they have become a part of modern mass communication. A characteristic feature of moblog is a combination of text and photographs or video illustrating the basic idea of the message. The text most often is short, due to the technical capabilities of mobile communication. Sometimes the text incorporates music file that reflects the author's emotions at the time of creation of the post, or performing information functions. Therefore, the distinctive features of moblog are multimediality, creolization, dialogicality.

The specificity of  moblog genre is determined by the purpose pursued by the author (see more about the typology of modern journalism [5]).

Posts in moblogs are speech acts, in characterizing them one should note the features of addressor and addressee, and the referent situation, place and time of communication, communication channel. The place and time of communication is not secured, it goes spontaneously. Communication channel (mobile phone, personal web page on the Internet, online communities of interests – Facebook, Instagram – or on the special website Lifeblog, where pictures, videos, text messages from mobile phone of subscribers are placed) does not involve direct contact between the communicants.

Thanks to the development of electronic media, particularly the Internet, media language acquired such characteristics as interactivity, the ability of creolization and hypertextuality. Any text can be potentially hypertextual, because it has the ability to spread by adding new information links. Online text lives a special life, as an opportunity to get information that is interesting for readers appears almost instantly, in the course of reading. Therefore, the potential hypertextual deployment is a characteristic feature of today's Internet speech. And this is not without reason. New, electronic media have an impact on linguistic characteristics of the text.

High technologies of modern journalism have become a prerequisite for the study of those qualities of media texts, which previously were not perceived as lingual. This is particularly true for the visualization, which implies the inclusion of elements of different types of codes – verbal and nonverbal – to a journalistic piece. The process of multimediatization developing very actively enforces linguists study the language of media away from the traditional, linear understanding of the text and concentrate on its actual characteristics such as the combination of verbal material and various kinds of illustrations, infographics, etc.

However, widespread journalistic rendering of text not only allows to learn the information about the fact in the variety of his qualities, but quite often leads to "imbalance" of information flow when an external component, obviously more actively perceived by an audience, so prevails over the word, often replacing it. Advertising texts and materials of mass media work unfortunately give too many samples of this "victory" over the printed word.

Media discourse emerged in the Internet also gained its specific features. It is "created by nuclear text, usually problematic, causing numerous responses, and posts comments whose authors have the opportunity not only to express their point of view on the nuclear text, but also to engage in dialogue with other bloggers" [1]. Thus, another important peculiarity of speech, which is particularly evident in online discourse, is dialogicality. It is a feature of the discourse that occurs in text-based electronic versions of printed publications and media speech actual for electronic mass media. Dialogical discourse, as a rule, has a syncretic character, able to include prose or poetic text, a picture (collage, painting, etc.), links to the music you can listen with the blogger-reader, infographics, etc. It has such qualities like polyphony, polycodeness. Sometimes such discourse is only a system of links to posts of the participants of the dialogue (discussion), however, the dialogical origin of this speech of unity is obvious.

The Internet space has significantly expanded the opportunities of journalistic style in content as well as in stylistic point of view. It has created new virtual personality, which is endowed with high social activity, is able to respond quickly to topical events, expressing their stance (the development of the Twitter a social network where you can publish a small, up to 140 characters, message – looks quite natural. The brevity of these records makes sharing opinions interactive and dynamic). Online personality is obviously discursive, as she "lives" only in a state of dialogue with other participants of the virtual communication.

At the same time in the era of digital media we see the active developing of the phenomenon of rewriting – creating a text based on another source (it is certainly not the evidence of high creativeness of modern journalism). Rewriting gives rise to the discourse, since the same fact can be interpreted in different ways in both content and stylistic aspects. The event becomes extended in time, with some alterations as new information becomes available. Sometimes these are private changes, updates, expert commentary, sometimes radically different interpretation of events. An example of the first type of event’s “life” in Internet is the way how the sanctions against Turkey, whose missile brought down a Russian plane, were presented. The second type of existence of information in Internet was submitted in Yandex news, which reported about the energy blockade of Crimea: the original text was attended by the news that the Kuban energy system becomes the gateway to Crimea, but subsequent media comments contained a refutation of this fact.

We should like to say that rewriting is conceived ambiguously, not only by linguists but also by journalists themselves. However, this type of obtaining and creating information clearly shows how the image of the event in the media changes, and emphasizes the narrativeness of contemporary journalistic discourse.

The narrativeness of mass media texts, allowing the author to be most convincing for the reader/viewer/listener in portraying his view of the world, is one of the important features of modern journalistic speech. A narrative of the life (story telling) makes the text subjective "second reality" on the basis of selection of facts, which transmits the axiology of the journalist, creating the image of the time. Media narrative is a part of the whole media discourse, thematically united subject-modal narrative, constructed in accordance with causal connections with the plot and story organized, which explicitly or implicitly present narrator and implicit narrator. Media narrative as the object of study of modern linguistics is of interest to structural, intentional-modal, axiological, rhetorical points of view, but also from the standpoint of text linguistics. Journalistic narrative (or narrative media) is a part of the general mass-mediated discourse. The difference between media narrative and narrative media seems essential: if we analyze the composition of modern media speech, we can distinguish the texts of the media (both print and electronic), advertising, public relations, blogosphere, documentaries. Each of these areas has its own purpose. Consequently, texts relating to a particular area are characterized by specific ways of selection and representing of events, the specificity of the system of subjects of speech, techniques of composition, worldview, linguistic (in particular, genre-syntactic) features of the narratives about modern life. That is why it is possible to agree with D. Herman, who argues that "cognitive narratology is transmedial in scope; it encompasses the nexus of narrative and mind not just in print texts but also in face-to-face interaction, cinema, radio news broadcasts, computer-mediated virtual environments, and other storytelling media" [7]. So we can talk about a new discipline of media narrative and examine it in the framework of organized narrative texts and discourses (journalistic materials, consisting of different genre forms). For example, a journalistic narrative by Georgy Zotov (Argumenty I Fakty) about Lebensborn ‒ "Mystery" of Lebensborn. What happened to 50,000 children stolen by the SS in the Soviet Union?" (19.09.2012); "Only three percent of children taken by the Nazis to "re-education" returned home" (03.10.12); an interview with Folkner Heineke, a millionaire from Hamburg (17.04.2013) brings together an article, an interview, and comments of historians and witnesses etc.

Another categorical trait of media speech is evaluation. This is the most important feature of journalistic speech, and, of course, the forms of its expression in the media discourse should not only meet the requirements of accuracy, reflection, of argumentation, but also should meet the cultural, moral attitudes of the audience. Assessment of the journalistic text can be expressed in colloquial style: there seems to be nothing wrong with the expressions "Babiy battalion" (about corrupt women "allies" of Anatoly Serdykov, the former defense minister) or a "mad printer" (the State Duma). The expressiveness of these nominations corresponds to the emotional intensity of the audience opinion concerning the described matter.

But it is impossible to justify the emergence of the assessments, which hurt the moral sense of the people, their ideas about life values. First of all we are talking about the permissibility of colloquial speech in journalistic discourse. But an equally serious concern should be paid to such a widespread manner of journalists’ speech as banter. It seems grazing when the journalist, quoting on radio Aleksandr Pushkin's poem "Winter morning", proposes his own continuation: "It is time, beauty, Wake up! Let's go hang out!" (RETRO FM, 08.02. 2017, lead by M. Kovalevsky). Even more striking demonstration of banter manner of speech behavior was the program "Sores" (radio Mayak, 4.10. 2012). Radio hosts Victorya Kolosova and Aleksey Veselkin took an unacceptable, offensive tone speaking about cystic fibrosis patients. Unfortunately, this type of verbal behavior is pursued by many leading electronic media, as well as some authors of printed texts, believing apparently that professionalism concludes primarily biting assessments, not their compliance with cultural and moral norms of behavior in society. Deliberately vulgar style, regardless of the attitude of the journalist and his newspaper, or radio, or TV to the described phenomenon creates the impression of "yellowness" of media. And the media should serve the development of culture in society.

Information space produced by the media is very wide. It is the whole world, native and alien, speaking Russian and other languages. He "lives" many lives in shortest moments. How this world is reflected in the language of the media?

First of all, information about different realities of contemporary generation is given in new loans. They create subject outlines of modern life, both material and cultural. IPhone, gadget, screenshot, infographic, 3D (eng. 3-dimensional – stereoscopic, volumetric), slogan, flashmob, fundraising (the process of raising funds and other resources of the organization to implement a specific social project), crowdfunding (crowdfunding projects) – here's a list of relatively "fresh" loan words. They are relevant in media speech, as the phenomena which they represent, has entered into our being.

Unfortunately, there is a fashion for borrowing, and in this case we are getting unnecessary synonyms of already existing symbols of objects, events, concepts. For example, the endowment fund (trust fund), fake, entertainment, casting, publics (public pages in a social network), skydiver (acrobat), autochthonous (indigenous), tickets, aftershock (repeated seismic shock), meltdown (core meltdown of a nuclear reactor), coffee break, volunteer etc. (see read more – 2). Such barbarisms infest to media speech, because a journalistic text should be informative and comprehensible to the general reader. "Encrypted" language can be used in two cases: if the author has nothing to say and he covers the lack of deep content with foreign language-macaronic style which, from his point of view, gives particular significance to what this journalist writes. Another reason is intentional "blackout" of information, because Russian analogues could paint a true picture, which would cause anxiety in the readers’ mind. Euphemistic speech with unnecessary use of borrowing causes a protest among journalists themselves. Aleksandr S. Shishkov wrote in "The Key to understanding the power of language", "wishing to establish themselves in the language must understand the root of its composition, in order not to make him look like an alien, and not to mix it with the height of baseness, beauty and ugliness" [6, P. 298].

The ability to create an inclusive and multidimensional information media, to produce a continuous media stream is also categorical to the media of the XXI century.

Thus, the modern journalistic speech is quite diverse in terms of stratification, content, axiology, stylistic characteristics. It includes both traditional media – print journalism, radio, television, and their Internet versions, as well as e-zines and a number of blogs equal to media. The media language of our century is interactive, dialogical and potentially hypertextual, it demonstrates stylistic diversity depending on the social orientation of the publication, and is issued in certain cultural and linguistic forms. They bring such qualities as polyphony, polycodeness, visualization.

Media speech is anthropocentric, reflects the author's worldview, interpretation of events and phenomena, it is directed not to average citizen, but to representatives at least of a particular stratum, the individual.

 "Living man", whose existence is reflected in the diverse media is the main subject of modern journalistic speech. It is not surprising that this being is often described with the help of numerous new borrowings and jargon: the journalistic text captures the changes that occurred in society and the consciousness of the individual in our time.

Media discourse is the basis for the development of modern Russian language. It creates new meanings that are broadcast through the channels of mass communication. It reflects the changes in the environment and fixes them in the public consciousness. We can say that media speech is not only the most important normative factor, but a vast field of interaction of different cultures and interests, thus forming national culture.

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