Evaluative comment in news discourse

Abstract

The paper describes the analysis of evaluative comments in the news discourse field. The linguistic study of evaluative comments, which are the part of the user response, is very important due to the little coverage of new genres specific to computer-mediated communication, against the background of its intensive development at the present stage. The evaluative comments study is of interest not only within one language framework, but also in the translation aspect due to the growing public interest not just to official news publications, but also to a wide foreign audience reactions to this or that event, especially if this event happened in the country of the translation recipient. The aim of the research is to study the features of evaluative commentary in the network news discourse. The subject of the analysis is the specifics of the adjectives functioning as part of an evaluative commentary. Speech analysis, frame analysis, structural analysis, comparative analysis, and quantitative analysis are carried out on the material of news publications on the sites of CNN and BBC, dedicated to the tragic event of the schoolchildren and teachers massacre in Parkland, Florida, USA. The conducted research allows us to conclude that lexical specificity is revealed when implementing an evaluative comment as part of a response to a news message on official news portals. Evaluative comments in a news message are implemented through certain structures, and evaluative comments implement reactions of disapproval ("Hideous crime!"), approval ("Such a courageous man!"), neutral surprise ("It's unforeseen!") and mistrust (" That's fake news").