Linguopragmatic Scopes of Modern Media Texts

Full Text

Introduction. Statement of the problem

The wide range of communication media and information technology, as well as the outcomes of their influence on shaping a society and modelling a public opinion, became the focus of attention of the researchers in the 1950s. M. McLuhan [1; 2] stated that the entire period of human existence represents a change of the key means of communicating and perceiving information.

The era of globalization has been a logical consequence of improvements in mass media, science and technology. The Internet has become the crowning symbol and catalyst of globalization processes, transforming itself from a purely technical invention into a parallel reality that is comfortable for the vast majority of the users.

With the invention of the Internet, the paradigm of mass communication has undergone fundamental changes, having made the transition from a predominantly one-dimensional communication to multi-dimensional structure of the communicative medium, which includes various sound effects and visual images in addition to linguistic means. The more complex, three-component communicative organization of “language-image-sound” is inherent in the modern information space which has formed the media text as a new form that of text existence in mass communication. The synergistic combination of signification units of linguistic and nonlinguistic nature in a media text has provided its multi-channel, multi-layered and multi-dimensional nature, significantly increasing the effectiveness of informationpsychological impact on a recipient.

Thus, the purpose of this article is to describe the linguopragmatic characteristics of a modern media text, functioning in the context of the global informationaland-psychological war, waged by geopolitical actors in order to implement their civilizational-and-historical plans by non-military means.

A media text as a key format for presenting information  in the modern mass communication

The heterogeneous structure of the text has been studied in linguistics earlier. The continuous improvement of traditional media and the emergence of new types following the increasing complexity of the communicative space has naturally led to a terminological update in applied linguistics. Studies on creolized and then video-verbal [3], polycode [4], multimodal [5], polycodepolimodal [6] or polycode multimodal [7] texts have emerged in the last fifteen years. According to А.N. Baranov’s definition: “The text is a complex whole consisting of not only verbal but also of non-verbal elements — pictures, photographs, diagrams, tables, etc.” [8. Р. 275].

It has already been proved that any creolized text essentially reflects the characteristics of a media text, as this definition shows, “it is a special phenomenon in which the verbal and non-verbal components form one visual, structural, semantic and functioning whole, which implies its complex pragmatic impact on the addressee” [9. P. 177]. M.B. Voroshilova specifies the definition of this communicative phenomenon as “a text which has a complex form, that is based on a combination of units of two or more different semiotic systems which enter into relations of interrelation, mutual complementarity and mutual influence, which determines the need for multi-channel text perception and, therefore, the complex impact on the addressee” [10. P. 22]. This seems reasonable, because it allows reflect the full set of communicative means of influence of modern mass media communication. In addition to the verbal and visual components, it is necessary to apply an auditory component, which also allows cover the areas of mass communication, including speech and non-verbal audio elements, such as of radio, television, cinema, theatrical and concert performances, etc. (film industry, theatres, advertising and ideological posters, etc.) sources are included in the sphere of mass communication as they are “forms of communicative influence on the masses” [10. P. 12].

Nowadays, we mainly deal with a polycode-multimodal text, which not only unites all variations of the named semantically enriched communicative space by its correspondence to the main essential feature of modern media communication — the presence of elements of different semiotic systems, but also implies the perception of information by different channels (“by means of different modalities”) [5. P. 2020]. Moreover, to this the Internet adds the possibility of multilateral interaction between addressers and addressees, author and viewers (readers). This requires cognitive-discursive, contextual and communicative-pragmatic analysis of both the main semantic and additional parts of the media text, available when there is an opportunity for evaluation and commentary by the audience.

Following T.G. Dobrosklonskaya, we consider a media text to be the main discrete unit of the media stream, which is largely dependent on the specific communication channel used to transmute the text: “We can say that any text is a message, a media text is a message plus a channel” [12. P. 52–53; 200]. The syncretic organization of the media text, reflecting its voluminous and multilevel structure, ensures the achievement of a synergistic effect in the process of communication, which manifests itself in the cognitive, semantic and manipulative aspects. The combination of linguistic and non-linguistic (media) components multiplies the cognitive activity of a recipient, constructs more complex conceptual meanings, and allows to influence his or her intentional and ideological attitudes. This is also reinforced by the fact that the media text goes beyond not only traditional media such as the radio and television, but also the Internet into other sub-genres of the Internet discourse: social networks, blogs or channels, which also act as media from a functional and content point of view. At present, the media text in its structure, content and purpose of creation is already far from its original format and has the following discrete characteristics: openness and immediate content updating, polycode and polylogue (thanks to the possibilities of two-way and multilateral communication) nature, multimodality, hypertextuality, high communicative potential. Thus, we can speak of the modern media text as a four-component communicative structure, which includes a text, hypertext, dynamic and/or static image and sound [12. P. 52–53; 200].

Thus, it should be noted that the persuasive effect of the media text does not only depend on verbal means. Elements of various semiotic systems are successfully combined in the contemporary means of mass communication. That brings the degree of their communicative influence on an addressee to a qualitatively different level of informational and psychological influence. It fits into the modern concept of waging an information war or an informational and psychological war, which is defined as “a confrontation of parties arising out of a conflict of interests and/or ideologies and conducted through intentional, primarily, linguistic influence on the minds of opponents” [13. P. 43]. From the point of view of linguistics, informational and psychological influence is a relatively new phenomenon, which does not contradict the modern linguistic tradition, but expands the understanding of the phenomenon highlighting the essence of a purely verbal influence on an addressee. This term features both the linguistic (verbal) and extralinguistic (non-verbal) levels of communication. This combination of verbal and non-verbal means of mass media influence on an addressee allows conduct its complex analysis at the interdisciplinary level, as according to A. Baranov, the analysis of non-verbal and mixed semiotic systems lies “beyond the limits of any linguistic research proper — in the sphere of social psychology, culture studies, political science”, etc. [8. P. 115].

The informational and psychological influence is a system of mediated psychocommunicative influence by verbal and non-verbal means, which aims at changing the mental state, social attitudes and behavior patterns of a recipient of mass information, taking into account its subjective-personal and motivation-activational characteristics. The implementation of purposeful operations and measures of effective informational and psychological influence as a whole is impossible without the wide coverage of potential addressees. Therefore, mass communication is inseparable from the processes mentioned above. Its sphere is much wider than the borders of armed forces of states and areas of military confrontation between them. It corresponds to the infinite volume of information flow in the boundless media space. The informational-psychological impact is an essential effect of the media text, the main purpose of which is to project a conceptual message onto the audience. From NATO’s expert papers, it follows that the object of this influence is any user of “information technology” [14]. In all socio-economic spheres “it all comes down to controlling perception and influencing people’s psyche through technology and the content it disseminates”^[1].

Requirements for the implementation of informational  and psychological influence in media texts

The modern individual is particularly susceptible to influence and manipulation, which contributes to the realization of qualitative information and psychological influence on his metasphere via a number of interrelated factors that can be conventionally divided into socio-economic and communicative. By the former, the authors mean intentionally adapting people to consuming specially prepared information and depriving them of the ability to evaluate it critically. This has become possible due to the widespread formation of a consumer society through advertising discourse, which, among other manifestations of mass culture, has indirectly created in people a total dependence on receiving readymade tangible and intangible products. In addition, members of the modern society have been accustomed to a life of maximum comfort and, over time, have become unprepared to change their habitual way of life. Specialists in marketing and political technology have used this as a basis for campaigns aimed at shaping and changing public opinion.

Nevertheless, in today’s informational society, the communicative component of information and psychological influence is still dominant. Moreover, in the context of aggravating confrontation between global actors, its importance is only increasing. This is explained by the fact that today the main sphere of human activity is the intangible environment, and the predominant sphere of interpersonal interaction is the Internet, in which the maximum impact effect can be achieved with modern technological capabilities. It is possible due to the interaction of linguistic means (text), images and sound effects in the communicative space of the media text, which, in turn, is fixed in a single hypertext as an interconnected set of texts (media texts) that make up the Internet discourse. In other words, the modern communicative structure of the Internet is reduced to a discourse-forming model “text-media text-hypertext”, as an entailment of the previously proposed triad “text-discourse-hypertext” [15. P. 5].

Merging into the virtual reality created by the media text and immersing oneself in it with the help of sensory analyzers, users find themselves in the position of perceiving “space in space” and experiencing the effect of presence in another communicative dimension. On the one hand, they are possessed by the phenomenon of fascination, which removes possible communicative barriers and intensifies the influencing effect; at the same time, they subconsciously project the transmitted social roles onto themselves and activate their imagination, intensifying their sensory experience. The subjective feeling of being in an illusory reality, the artificially forced development of the plot and the high information pressure per unit of time a priori ensure a higher level of impact than in the usual conditions of outward reality.

Pragmatic characteristics of informational-psychological impact of media text

As a part of the enormous amount of heterogeneous information, perceived by a person in media space through the visual channel, firstly, there should be mentioned messages of linguistic nature, containing a traditional verbal text as “a united by a semantic connection sequence of sign units, whose main properties are cohesion and completeness” [16. P. 507]. The pragmatic potential of the written text is self-sufficient, and the effectiveness of the message directly depends on author’s skillful use of the chosen linguistic means: neutral vocabulary and syntactic means, stylistic, phonetic and rhetorical devices, elements of wordplay, intertextual means of a language, etc.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of any message also depends on the completeness and quality of information perceived by a recipient, which appears flat as a result of the lack of visualization, and on their remembering this information, the amount of which, as it is well known, after two weeks does not exceed 10 % of what has been read [17]. A printed or handwritten page containing only lines of linguistic characters that make up a text leaves a recipient without any reliance on visualized images and often leads them to an inaccurate interpretation of the message: “The word horse does not look like a horse, does not sound like a horse and does not feel like a horse. The concept of weather does not reproduce any of the hundreds of specific instances directly related to its meaning” [18. P. 5]. It follows that the effectiveness of a message also depends on its correct understanding by the audience. In this respect, the visual support plays a role of the utmost importance. Besides, the image has a dual nature. On the one hand, it complements the textual information, but on the other hand, it can distract an addressee from the main idea. And generally a well-thought visual element helps to reshape its conceptual meaning in human mind and makes the message more persuasive (see Fig.). Professor O.I. Maksimenko says, “The new communicative situation in the world has demanded the emergence of other, mixed types of information representation often with a minimal presence of a verbal text, understandable to a large number of people, i.e. polycoded texts” [19. P. 95–96].

Combination of verbal and non-verbal elements in a media text (Source: Statista)

The same applies to the information perceived by the acoustic channel, which is considered to be the main means of speech communication [20. P. 177]; not only verbal, but also other sound elements of the message penetrate through it. They give the latter additional semantic nuances which are inaccessible in the isolated perception of an oral text, and make the conditions of the communicative situation more realistic, psychological and attractive (or, on the contrary, repulsive) for an addressee. The phonetic features of the addresser’s speech, ultimately lead to an increase in the impact potential of a message and its deeper comprehension. Typical examples of such polycoding are radio broadcasts, sound recordings (audio books, songs, etc.), some theatre genres, etc.

Thus, in the set of extralinguistic factors, non-linguistic elements of auditory and visual enhancement play a special role, which bring the characteristics of communication beyond the traditional verbal interaction into the sphere of a more voluminous, polycoded design. In this case, the multidimensional content of the message provides a higher level of impact and forces the recipient’s organs of hearing and vision, which were previously focused only on the lexical, phonetic and kinetic characteristics of an addressee to engage in the perception of additional, audiovisual information. It is also important that the information expressed by non-linguistic means is the basis of forms of influence, “aimed primarily at the subconscious component of the psyche” [21. P. 66]. Finally, under the conditions of mass communication the audience usually feels more trust in non-verbal information than in verbal one [22].

The main perceptual human senses, vision and hearing, ensure the perception of over 90 % of incoming information [23. P. 53]. The contemporary world is based on images and associations [24. P. 181], which under the conditions of visualization of the information are remembered better than a text in its linguistic manifestation. Visual observations of what is happening, such as watching video fragments, is even more effective in terms of fixing information in memory, “Through the clever use of sound and image, we can make the viewer identify with the situation on the screen. This identification provides effective communication” [18. P. 214]. And, most importantly, the visual non-static image is capable of changing the audience’s attitude to certain phenomena [18. P. 215].

S.G. Kara-Murza quotes as an example the phenomenon of television, which “operates simultaneously with text, music and visually perceived moving images,” and as a result “has an exceptionally high, magical ability to focus, scatter and switch the attention of the viewer” [25. P. 2]. The effectiveness of combining various forms of verbal and non-verbal influence lies in the fact that this approach “mobilizes peripheral attention systems” and “ensures greater redundancy of information in the central integrating system. The greater the redundancy, the less effort is required to perceive the message” [25. P. 2].

The visual perception of the recipient of man-made objects and images constructed in media space is guided by the degree of perfection of their forms, which designers, spin doctors and media specialists strive to bring closer to the ideal proportion of the “golden ratio”. The phenomenon is widely exploited in advertising: “encountering such forms activates and animates the whole process of perception, generates positive emotions and strengthens the effect of the advertising message” [20. P. 207]. The perfection of natural proportions is also the focus of propaganda and PR. Each of the arts — literature, music, theatre, etc., which are actually media-texts — broadcasting to mass audiences their works is based on the “information-perfection” impact of different types — linguistic, visual or auditory [20. P. 208].

A multicoded message becomes multimodal when several sensory analyzers of a recipient are involved simultaneously. Thus, in addition to the simultaneous perception of visual information and a speech work of written nature, we may observe other patterns: for instance, audio information of non-linguistic nature and an oral speech work, cross-modal combinations ‒ visual information with an oral speech or auditory information with a written speech. The center of the complex communicative impact on a recipient is when technically sophisticated combinations of audiovisual information with spoken and written texts on the Internet are used.

While television often meets these characteristics, the virtual environment of the global network is more advanced in terms of its affecting effect. The Internet has become the quintessential media development, absorbing and retransmitting them. Apart from the fact that it has the largest audience, numbering several billions worldwide, its communication space has reached a high level of interactivity, expressed through direct communication between the source of information and recipients via feedback, the possibility to comment on news, to engage in discussion of content, etc. Any user can contribute the responses to comments and communicate at his/her own discretion and post any information.

The interaction of communicants which takes place around a particular media text is nothing but the production of new verbal and non-verbal works, new media messages that constitute a separate segment of the global hypertext that permeates the Internet discourse and acts as an important linguistic and pragmatic communication factor. From the point of view of hypertextuality, an additional communicative effectiveness of a media text lies in the transmission of socially useful information, the veracity and verifiability of which are achieved through hyperlinks to its primary sources. In addition, links to blogs, social networks, Telegram feeds and other sources can create some effectively working space where the desired route to finding information is set with coherent authorial arguments. This technique is also used to reach a wider audience, retain their attention, and create the right perception of the issue among different age groups. Information presented in a ready-made form will avoid reading resources with an opposing point of view and form the desired opinion of the sender of the information among the recipients.

The main linguopragmatic relations of a media text in the context of informational-psychological impact are as follows:

1. Media texts are differentiated by their genre and addressee, and are communicatively organized according to these factors. Its recipient pays attention to a media text that is catchy, devoted to an issue burning for the addressee, relevant and sufficiently concise, showing the general tendency to reduce the verbal component in the message. Subconsciously, the information received passes through the addressee’s internal set beliefs, associations and, stereotypes. A sustained communicative, under certain conditions — manipulative effect is achieved by the subject of informational and psychological influence during long-term “processing” of the audience.
2. The image, as well as the sound element, constitutes the extra-linguistic and partially the paralinguistic part of a message. Regardless of the share of the non-verbal component in a media text, firstly, a recipient usually pays attention to it, except for videos that do not have an autoplay function. Then a recipient, guided by the principles of skimming reading, “grabs” the text in the large print and sees it in its entirety or individual key lexical units. The addressee may not get to the small print text — it is the last one to be read and sometimes it is not read at all. In this case, the conceptual setting of the message is “restructured” by this part of the text and formed in their mind in the form intended by the communicator. In any case, the message must meet the requirement of congruence.
3. A media text consisting solely of a linguistic part is potentially reduced to a linear text, while being embedded in the general communicative space of media discourse or Internet discourse. It will be in demand if it is sufficiently substantiated by facts, statistics and the author’s reasoning, if it is commensurately saturated with subjective, evaluative and emotional vocabulary, and if its rhetorical and syntactical form is organic. Informationalpsychological impact in such a message is reduced to a speech message, but may retain certain audiovisual components, inherent to the hypertext and indirectly affecting the recipient.
4. The demand for the media text enhances the so-called correctness virus [26. P. 110]. A communicator should be well aware of the preferences of his/her target audience. Similar to an advertising text, the media text should include Abstractions and examples from both the author’s personal experience or well-known media personalities and well-known cases that have already caused a desired and necessary response or reaction to the context; a non-trivial authorial opinion that builds on the formula “problem-commonly accepted point of view-authorial position with a possible solution”.
5. Although it is recommended to avoid personalization in traditional texts of the journalistic genre, in modern media texts personalization is used to attract the audience’s attention and establish contact with them through personal address and use of informal vocabulary. On the one hand, it helps break down barriers and imitate intimacy with the recipient of the message; on the other hand, it requires skillful and moderate use, as in some cases it can psychologically repel the audience.
6. The verbal and non-verbal media which make up the media text should be used as part of the communicator’s chosen communicative strategy to shape and change the attitudes (opinions, attitudes) of the recipient. In terms of the modus operandi of a media text and its linguistic organization, communicative (persuasive) strategies, referred to, are as special ones. They are divided into:
   
   1. Value strategies, which aim to form (change) the value and attitudes of the receiver.
   2. Rational strategies. By employing them, the addresser purposes to convince the audience through both logical, conceptual and emotional information, targeted at the recipient’s sensual or emotional spheres.

Having analyzed modern media texts we can conclude that they are highly influenced by the genre of advertising. The most evident proofs of this statement are the strategies and techniques used in media texts, which come from the advertising industry:

• drawing attention to the object or event in question;
• creating a positive image of a particular point of view and a negative image of the opposing one;
• self-presentation of the author by expressing his or her own point of view;
• optimal targeting.

In order to implement these strategies, the following techniques are used:

• varying fonts and graphic design;
• phonetic advancement;
• exclamation mark;
• creating a problematic situation;
• absolutizing an evaluation or attributing evaluative characteristics.

The linguistic and pragmatic potential of a media text lies in a canonically constructed either oral or printed verbal text, enhanced by vivid and figurative language, as well as an integrated hypertext and a well-chosen video and/or photo sequence. A media message of this nature is constructed and functions similarly to advertising texts (in the rational aspect, in the emotional aspect, in the value aspect) presented, for example, in glossy magazines, on the pages and sites of bloggers, etc. A high audience size can be achieved by additional means of transmitting information. For example, large news aggregators have pages in social networks and promptly updated channels in messengers such as Telegram, where short notes on current events are published or previous messages are duplicated, in addition to the official sites themselves. Despite the seeming freedom of structure, such media texts have a fixed structure. Some of them contain elements of storytelling, in which a typical situation is described first, followed by an expert or some celebrity perspective on the situation, the author’s vision of the problem and suggestions on the further development of the topic through discussion.

Thus, on a structural level, four basic elements can be distinguished in spoken and written media texts, similarly to a traditional print media text: a headline, which is often a slogan; an introduction; the main text; and a conclusion, which contains the so-called echo-phrase, designed to transmit the main idea of the entire narrative. However, to increase the impact on the mass audience, authors provide the opportunity to comment on their message or express an emotional response through the use of emoji, stickers, etc. These elements can be considered the fifth constituent (optional) part that is characteristic of a media text functioning on the Internet. They create the illusion of personal communication between the author of the text and the addressee, which allows communicate on a horizontal level, helps to overcome the limitations of “live” interpersonal interaction and multiplies the manipulation effect. It is achieved by a special atmosphere of interaction, by simulating a “face-to-face” communication where everyone’s opinion matters, and by creating the effect of the real-time exchange of experience and information.

The headline is the most important part of a media text because it reflects the main theme and message of the text. Its main purpose is to attract the attention of the audience and interest the recipients; in the case of an advertisement, it may be a call to try a particular product. The author may use imperative and emphatic constructions which are based on puns or a mixing the semiotic codes (for example, numerical symbols and text), violate some grammatical norms (omission of articles, modal verbs, introduction of abbreviations, etc.), which is typical of the rules of construction of headlines in the print press:

The introduction sets out the general problem of the media text and highlights key points that the author wishes to draw attention to and that will be covered further, including the address to the interlocutors.

Depending on the communicative setting, the verbal (written) part of the media text may contain several paragraphs, each comprising a different idea interpreted by the author. In order to increase the impact on the recipient, authors resort to both rational and emotional types of argumentation. The main body paragraph is constructed according to the rules of academic writing and consists of a topic sentence summarizing the main content of the paragraph and the transition to the next paragraph. The argumentation can be brief, extended and ascertaining.

In the conclusion, the author summarizes all the points made earlier, expresses his/her personal opinion concerning the subject of the argument and often invites further discussion in the commentary. The most frequent way of doing so is with a so-called echo-phrase, which is usually subjective, evaluative and precedentsetting in nature. It is of great importance for the media text, because most often the addressee, having become interested in the headline, skims the text and then reads the conclusion carefully. As a consequence, conclusions are drawn on the basis of the echo phrase. Thus, the main functions of the conclusion are: to repeat the main idea of the text and to give it completeness. An open-ending text is also used, whereby the addressee is asked a question, for which they need to reflect on the material presented and leave their feedback in the comments. By involving the subscribers in the discussion, the communicator shapes a certain social attitude.

In addition to the abovementioned features of informational-psychological impact in media texts, the authors use the following rhetorical and organisational techniques:

1. Broadcasting controversial or unproven information in a presumptive form in order to manipulate public opinion, stir up readers’ interest and provoke further discussion in comments.
2. The deification of evaluation in order to give exceptional status to the idea or concept being promoted.
3. The introduction of a rhetorical question at the conclusion of the text to initiate a discussion in the comments, create an effect of live communication, an exchange of experience.
4. Questioning the audience after the main text in posts or commentaries, etc. in order to get feedback. Such dialogicality (polylogicality) contributes to the collection of data about the habits, needs, interests, opinions of the collective addressee in order to have a more effective impact in the future.

To enhance the impact of these pragmatic, communicative, text-forming and rhetorical devices and techniques, the addressee uses a number of linguistic and intertextual means in a modern media text. Thus, at the lexical-and-grammatical level, one should distinguish evaluative adjectives, represented by synonyms with different expressive shades of meaning, various intensifiers of meaning and adjectives in the superlative degree (often substantivized), lexical units containing such shades of meaning as generalization, universality, unlimitedness, uniqueness, etc. At the stylistic level such traditional means are used as epithets, comparisons, lexical repetitions, gradation, metaphors in their broadest sense, synonyms and antonyms, and occasionally there is an intentional dialogical and colloquial nature of the narration. The syntactic level is characterized by firstperson narration, the use of homogeneous sentence members, parcellation, segmentation, constructions with separate sentence members, inversions, etc. The intertextual level provides a significant impact on the cognitive-axiological and sensual-emotional spheres of the recipient through allusions, the techniques of word play (paraphrase, pun, etc.), etc., expressed both verbally and nonverbally. Through reference to precedent works of art, the authors seek to address the cultural code and mentality of their audience.

Thus, the content of a modern media text is chosen by the subject of information in a linguopragmatic way, taking into account the communicative purpose, the characteristics of the addressee, the conditions of message transmission and other factors. The communicator’s task is to harmoniously combine linguistic means (if any), image (s) and/or sound elements.

Conclusion

Summing up the study results, we must state that any modern media text forms a unique communicative space, which is based on the author’s intention, rules of coherence and completeness and the interaction of its components: a text, hypertext, dynamic (static) image and sound. The main function and at the same time the effect of the media text, the effectiveness of which is increased by using the possibilities of PR and advertising technologies, is the production of information-psychological impact on the audience through a skillful combination of verbal and non-verbal units in accordance with universal mathematical and aesthetic parameters. The capacity of the linguistic and pragmatic potential of media communication depends on the effectiveness of its use of linguistic and non-linguistic means, which should ensure its rigorous logical proof (in the rational aspect), high psychological quality (in the emotional aspect) and a certain attitudinal nature (in the value aspect). At the same time, it must be taken into account that the information the recipient receives from external sources passes through the filter of his reality tunnel, and therefore a single message is not always sufficient to make significant adjustments in their cognitiveaxiological frame of reference. The goals of information and psychological influence are achieved by communicators at a “long distance” as a result of systematic repetition of a large number of semantically homogeneous media texts and, consequently, consistent construction of an “alternative” reality in the information space.

The most effective message in terms of achieving a communicative intent is now one in which heterogeneous types of information complement each other. On the Internet, the impact effect of the media text is the highest, as it is not only implemented in a polycode and multimodal format that engages various semiotic codes and sensory analyzers of the collective recipient, but also provides the latter with a communicative liberty to publicly evaluate and comment on the message. Horizontal and vertical interaction between communicators in virtual space significantly increases the psychological effect of the media text, while the statistics of their emotional reactions add to the persuasiveness of the message.

 

_{¹ Речь идет о таком виде вооружений… // The sourse (in Russian) speaks about the kind of weapons: Негодяи и гении. Telegram. URL: https://t.me/negodyai_i_genii/259 (accessed: 18.11.2022).}

About the authors

Natalia A. Akhrenova

State University of Humanities and Social Studies; Moscow Region State Pedagogical University

Author for correspondence.
Email: nakhrenova@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1265-5595

D.Sc. (Philology), Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of Germanic-Romance Languages of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, State University of Humanities and Social Studies; a.i. of the Translation and Cognitive Linguistics Department, State University of Education

30, Zelyonaya street, Kolomna, Russian Federation, 140410; 24, Very Voloshinoy street, Mytishi, Russian Federation, 141014

Ruslan I. Zaripov

Prince Alexander Nevsky Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

Email: lieutenant-en-chef@ya.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9980-7928

PhD in Philology, doctoral candidate

14, Bol’shaya Sadovaya, Moscow, Russian Federation, 111033

References

Supplementary files