Radial-Chain Model Of Everyday Interpretation Of Media Events In Internet Discourse

Abstract

The research devoted to the study of media routine is relevant nowadays. The paper raises the problem of everyday interpretation of media events in Internet Discourse. The problem given falls into the range of Neolinguistics studying occurrence of language of everyday life. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the model of everyday interpretation of media events. As the model of interpretation we understand the way of development of the media event in Interpretive Discourse. The methodological basis of the research is the methodology of Interpretative Linguistics. Interpretation is considered as a process of actualisation of the mode meanings of agreement, disagreement, or neutral mode meanings. These dialogic modalities form the mode plan of interpretative activity and the interpretative statement as a result. The material for analysis was formed with comments of the online news article. The method of interpretative statement analysis revealing the mode meanings actualised in statements and establishing mode statement concord forming the text corpus is used to identify the model of everyday interpretation.

Keywords: Media Eventeveryday interpretationinterpretation modelmedia routineinternet discourse

Introduction

The research devoted to the study of media routine is relevant nowadays. Generally, such studies are aimed at analysing the influence of media texts on the formation of everyday values of the lan-guage community. At the same time, the problem of media texts role in shaping the worldview of a native speaker is often declarative in such studies; the empirical data confirming or refuting this hy-pothesis, unfortunately, is not provided in any linguistic papers. The only thing that does not raise any question is that media texts ‘dictate’ what we should talk about. Getting an event into the media focus, of course, becomes a bundle mechanism that starts the process of discussing it in the language community. It is consistent with observations suggesting that the everyday language activity of a native speaker is associated with reflexive evaluation activities involving the analysis and evaluation of perceived information, including the media information. It allows to claim that the study of media routine is possible not only in the aspect of the evaluation of media texts role for native speakers’ everyday life, but also in the aspect of the problem of media events interpretation by common native speakers.

Problem Statement

The interest in studying the problem of everyday interpretation of media events caused by the growing interest in the study of native speakers’ everyday interpretative activity processing by means of special models and types of perception (Abrosimova & Kravchenko, 2017а; Abrosimova & Kravchenko, 2017b). For example, every day types of perception were exposed in relation to literary texts (Maksimova, 2011).

However, there are no works presenting the specifics of everyday interpretation of media events in the linguistic sources. The significance of studying the everyday Media Discourse organ-ised around a particular media event is due to the possibility to prognosticate the peculiarities of its perception by an amateur (non-professional) linguistic consciousness, which is important concerning Media Linguistics and Medialogy, prevention (precaution) of social conflicts in the language community and evaluation of the interest of the readership in the news.

The study of everyday interpretation of media events falls into the range of Neolinguistics studying occurrence of language of everyday life (Abramova, Zhirjakova, & Il'jaeva, 2009; Kolmogorova, 2009; Sokolova, 2016). The study of everyday life, including the every-day speech, is an interdisciplinary problem of modern science focused on a comprehensive descrip-tion of facts. For example, the study of everyday communication is a topical issue for modern Lin-guistics, Ethnography, Philosophy, Sociology, etc. Everyday speech is studied by ethnographers who describe the culture and speech features of everyday communication (Nancy Rees), cultural specialist and anthropologists (Mikhail Guboglo), and other scientists.

The linguistic study of everyday communication began with the research of phonetic, lexical and grammatical features of oral colloquial speech, written colloquial speech, variety in genre of oral and written colloquial speech, linguistic and grammatical discursive peculiarities of oral and written colloquial (informal) communication, in the latter case, Student Discourse, everyday Medical Discourse, everyday Pedagogical Discourse, and everyday Political Discourse are under study.

The multidimensionality of the problem of everyday speech description allows to highlight another way of its existence as an everyday Media Discourse organised around media events and represented by everyday interpretive speech of native speakers regarding perceived media events.

The analysis of sources concerning problematic issue of the article shows that the everyday interpretation of media events is practically not represented in Linguistics. According to current pa-pers dedicated to the analysis of the media political events the issue of everyday media event inter-pretation falls into the range of everyday Linguistics, Linguoculturology and Lingopersonology (Golev, 2015; Mel'nik, 2017). The focus of these works is on the political Internet commentary as a reflection of the aria of its functioning - at the intersection of Political Discourse and interpretive activity of a native speaker. However, the problem of the interpretative functioning of the media event in the everyday linguistic consciousness is not raised and is not studied by any scientists.

Research Questions

The study of everyday interpretation of media events involves dealing with questions about the specifics of interpretation. Interpretation is understood as a ‘world reflection formed involving language and creating some constructive representation of the global picture and its parts’ and it ‘lets us to look at the meaning-making as a cognitive system in which personalised knowledge con-struction has the form of verbal behaviour’ (Sidorova, 2019).

It is further said that the interpretation is considered in the context of the theory of modality provided by Balli (1955). It is logical to assume that if the interpretative utterance has a dic-tum-mode organisation, in other words the interpretative activity of the native speaker is organized according to the dictum-mode model. Generally, interpretation is associated with the actualisation of dictum meanings of events that eager a native speaker to represent personally-colored dictum information about the interpreted text (Renzjaeva & Kim, 2019). In this article, interpretation is considered as ‘personal con-struction of knowledge’, in other words, we are interested in the modus plan of interpretative activi-ty, which often remains in the shadow of research interest.

Preliminary observation of the language material shows that the interpretative functioning of the media event is associated with the derivational mechanisms that regulate the continuing deriva-tional and interpretative processes in the dialogue (Shpil'naja, 2016). In previously published papers it is shown that the derivational and interpretational processes are regulated by the mechanism of dialogic citation, which determines the pragmatic derivability of the signified language sign from its signifier (Shpil'naja, 2018). It means that the interpretative functioning of an event is associated with the implementation of the derivational mechanism of dialogic citation and is associated with the actualisation of dialogic modalities of agreement, disagreement, or neutral dialogic modality. These dialogic modalities constitute the modus plan of interpretative activity and, as a result, of the interpretative utterance.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the model of everyday interpretation of media events. As the model of interpretation we understand the way of development of the media event in Interpretive Discourse.

The analysis of Internet Discourse is chosen due to its high heuristic potential evinced in its ability of fixing large amount of language material as ‘sequence of events’ which is highly chal-lenging in the matter of studying oral and written speech patterns. Moreover, the selection of lan-guage material in the Internet Discourse allows to make reliable conclusions, which is significant for the Linguistics as a science (Goncharova, 2018; Nikolaeva, 2016).

The material for analysis was formed with the interpretive statements in the form of Internet comments to the media event "the Governor of the Novosibirsk Oblast banned any commerce in the Novosibirsk underground for the purpose of citizens safety" (2013). The total number of interpreted statements analysed is 614.

On the basis of formal principle the analysed material is a news article (media text) and In-ternet comments. From the point of view of interpretative linguistics, we have an interpreted text and interpretative texts (statements) considered as interpretative versions of the source text basis. At the same time, modal agreement relationships are established between the interpretative versions of the base text.

Research Methods

To identify the model of the everyday interpretation of media events in Internet Discourse, the method of interpretative analysis of the utterance is used.

The interpretation technique of analysis is carried out in several stages.

The first stage is the selection of the totality of statements related in Internet Discourse by the addressing relationships of the message (who the author of the statement answers to). The se-cond stage is the analysis of the relationship of these statements, which is the definition of the base text for each of them. The third stage is the analysis of the mode plan of statements, which involves the reconstruction of the dialogical position of a native speaker (dialogic modality). The fourth stage is a graphical representation of the model of the interpretative functioning of media events in everyday language consciousness.

Findings

Based on the analysis of empirical material, a radial-chain model of the everyday interpretation of media events in Internet Discourse was identified.

The implementation of this model assumes that the interpretation (development) of a media event is carried out both on the base text and on other statements indirectly related to the base text.

The abbreviation IVBT (Interpretative Version of the Base Text) is used as a legend for an interpretative statement. The number denotes the serial number of the interpretative statement in the total set of statements taken for analysis.

IVBT-91

Another nonsense of our managers. When I was young, I had a kiosk with disks in the un-derground passage. All sellers knew each other and kept the order no worse than the authorities. It was us, and not the guards, who chased beggars from there and “stinky” homeless who came in to warm themselves. Though this is lobbying the interests of the owners of the shopping center with their epically high rental fees. This is the elimination of their competitors - small businesses, which definitely sell things more cheaply. This is an inconvenience for citizens who are forced to go somewhere for shopping and not make them along the way.

In the statement above, the native speaker expresses the dialogical position of disapproval (disagreement) with the actions of the governor, considering the actions of the latter as lobbying the interests of the owners of shopping centers.

IVBT-91-1

Grey, how much less was the rental rate? Well, just for comparison?

IVBT-91-1 is connected with IVBT-91, since relations of mode consistency are established between them. The native speaker in this statement expresses a neutral dialogical position relative to the dialogical position of the subject IVBT-91. Comp.: well, just for comparison.

IVBT-91-2

Vitalik, it was a long time ago ... the disks were gainful 10 years ago. Back then there weren’t so many shopping centers. But compared to renting an area in GUM, it was about 2,3 times cheaper to rent a kiosk in the undeground. With Voentorg (Military Shop) it was 1,5 times cheaper. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the data and its relevance today.

The analysed statement is addressed to the author IVBT-91-1, as evidenced by the address to Vitalik. It expresses a neutral dialogical position in relation to the dialogical position of the author of the previous statement.

IVBT-91-3

Grey, pirate discs in the underground is a relic of the 90s. Forever drunk sellers, gopniks, scratched discs with videos of muddy quality. You must be ashamed of having kept a kiosk, not proud.

The IVBT-91-3 is addressed to the author of the IVBT-91, the interpretation is accompanied by the actualisation of the dialogic modality of disagreement, expressing the position of disapproval of the author IVBT-91-3 regarding the dialogical position of the author IVBT-91. Comp.: You must be ashamed of having kept a kiosk, not proud.

IVBT-100

I fully support the governor. It’s time to stop turning the city into a flea market. Traders are ready to go in everywhere. I can’t approach Studencheskaya station because Geodezicheskaya street is overcrowded with hagglers. You can only leave flowers. They’re beautiful and don’t bother anyone. Everything else is a mess!

This statement is connected with the mode alignment relationship with the base text, the way the text is created as a response to the governor who orders to close the metro stalls in order to ensure the safety of the city residents from terrorism. IVBT-100 is the result of updating the dialog-ical position of consent, expressing approval of the actions of the governor (I fully support the gov-ernor).

IVBT-100-1

Zheka, no! Flower kiosks also need to be removed, there is no way to go because of them! ))))))))))))))))

The analyzed statement is created as a result of modal coordination with IVBT-100 along the line of updating the dialogical position of disagreement (disapproval) regarding the opinion of the subject of IVBT-100.

IVBT-100-2

Zheka, all these things are undeniably great. Except for if we “remove trading”, we will not have anything left. The whole country lives on sales and resales.

IVBT-100-2 is a response replica of IVBT-100, as evidenced by the presence in its structure of the author’s nickname IVBT-100; Comp.: Zheka, all these things are undeniably great. The ana-lysed statement is created due to the actualisation of the dialogical position of disagreement, so the author of this text does not agree with the position of Zheka, who offers to "remove trading" Comp.: Except for if we ‘remove trading’, we will not have anything left.

IVBT-100-3

Anonymous, it means that it’s time to finish this absurdity, and try to grow wiser))))))))))))))).

IVBT-100-3 is created as a result of modal coordination with IVBT-100-2 along the line of updating the neutral mode meaning. There are no markers in the text indicating approval or disap-proval by the native speaker of the dialogical position of the author IVBT-100-2 - Anonymous.

Having analysed the IVBT of the base text, we managed to present the relationship between them in a graphical form (Figure 1 )

Figure 1: Radial-Chain Model of Everyday Interpretation of Media Events
Radial-Chain Model of Everyday Interpretation of Media Events
See Full Size >

As it seen, IVBT-91 and IVBT-100 are connected with the base text by radial relations. In its turn, IVBT-91 becomes the basic text for IVBT-91-1 and IVBT-91-3, while IVBT-91-1 becomes the basic text for IVBT-91-2. IVBT-100 is the basic text for the IVBT-111-1 and IVBT-111-2, the latter are connected with each other and with the IVBT-111 chain link.

Thus, it can be stated that the everyday interpretation of media events in Internet Discourse is carried out according to the radial-chain model.

Conclusion

Identifying the model of the everyday interpretative functioning of media events in Internet Discourse was based on the following points.

Firstly, the position that the interpretative activity of a native speaker has a mode plan, found in the dialogical position of a native speaker, was significant for us. This allowed us to de-scribe the interpretation as a process of modal coordination of interpretative statements. At the same time, modal coordination of interpretative statements is carried out along the line of objectification of dialogic modalities of consent, disagreement or neutral dialogic modality.

The study allows us to conclude that the everyday interpretation of media events in Internet Discourse is carried out according to the radial-chain model. The implementation of this model as-sumes that the interpretation (development) of a media event is carried out simultaneously with the base text and with other statements indirectly associated with the base text.

In the future, a comparative analysis of the models of everyday and professional interpreta-tion of media events in Internet Discourse is planned.

Acknowledgments

The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 20-012-00375 ‘Everyday Media Discourse: Linguoculturological and Lexicographic Aspects’.

References

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About this article

Publication Date

03 August 2020

eBook ISBN

978-1-80296-085-3

Publisher

European Publisher

Volume

86

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Edition Number

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Subjects

Sociolinguistics, linguistics, semantics, discourse analysis, translation, interpretation

Cite this article as:

Dudareva, Y. A., & Shpilnaya, N. N. (2020). Radial-Chain Model Of Everyday Interpretation Of Media Events In Internet Discourse. In N. L. Amiryanovna (Ed.), Word, Utterance, Text: Cognitive, Pragmatic and Cultural Aspects, vol 86. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 1540-1547). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.08.178