Linguomedial Reconstruction of an Event: COVID-19 Pandemic Coverage in British and French Quality Press

The article looks at linguistic units applied for creating an image of an event. The first section of the article dwells on the most important works of Russian scholars in the field under investigation. Here, the term “linguomedial reconstruction of an event” is introduced and defined as the creation of an image of an event in mass media, including the analysis of information, its interpretation, creating media texts, and their positioning and functioning in media space. The second section describes in detail the analysis of informational and analytical media texts from British and French quality press dedicated to the Coonavirus pandemic: spread of the new virus, measures taken by the authorities, and vaccination. The analysis was conducted on lexical (identification of key lexical components of the texts) and suprasegmental (identification of key structural elements of the text) levels. The third section contains the results of the study. It was found out that both informational and analytical media texts consist of roughly equal number (usually less than 6) of topic-based sections (TBS). Analytical texts explore each topic more fully than informational ones; besides, the former include such topic as ‘expert opinion’. Seemingly, the larger is the volume of articles describing certain topic, the higher position this topic takes in news agenda. Any TBS may be characterized with a particular set of words and expressions - its lexical base. The lexical base of the TBS differs between cultures; the study shows that British quality press media prefer words describing actions and deeds, while French ones pay more attention to emotional response to the event. Besides, it was noted that military lexical units were widely used in pandemic new coverage, thus conceptualizing anti-coronavirus measures as military actions.