STYLISTIC DEVICES: PECULIARITIES OF DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE PRESS (BASED ON TABLOID ARTICLES DATED 1990–1999)

Abstract

Тhe work aims to research topical issues of text formation in discourses of diff erent types, and identifi es general trends in the fi eld of stylistic devices (SDs) actualisation in media texts. The research was done with the implementation of the methods of parametric, quantitative and distributional analysis. Analysis has been conducted on the basis of a representational sample of articles from English-language tabloids with mass circulation dated 1990–1999, which will further supply the research with a diachronic perspective. As a result of the analysis, conclusions have been derived about the active role of SDs in popular English-language press, whereby the number of lexical SDs signifi cantly exceeded that of the syntactic ones. It has also been duly observed that the linguocreative potential of the SDs most frequently implemented in media discourse (namely, metaphor, metonymy, epithet) is characterized by graduality, as a result of which their contextual actualisations are assessed as those with low, high or anti-creativity. We defi ne anticreativity as a characteristic of linguacreative items whose creative potential diminishes in case of their use in a particular discourse type, whereby their implementation in another type of discourse may exhibit a higher creative potential, e.g. when employed in fi ction. Proceeding from the analysis of such parameters as the genre-functional type of article (after T. G. Dobrosklonskaya) and its length, the work concludes that the biggest number of SD-related linguistic novations is to be registered in feature articles, which do not only inform the reader, but also express evaluation and address emotions.