Modus on the level discourse (on the example of the "Cold War" of 2014)...29 Moskalyuk L.I. Reflection of features of colloquial speech in the shvank of Russian Germans

The author develops his concept of modus (like in Charles Bally's works) in this article in such a way that he moves modus on the discourse level. The discourse level, together with the variety of its meanings, is referred to as the sum of texts having similar characteristics as well as meanings circulating in a row of one direction texts and a similar row having the same actions within the reality that is reflected in them. The author analyzes modus in the discourse aspect using the sharp political contradiction in 2014 (first of all, in mass media) of global political powers - the USA and their allies with Russia; the cause of this contradiction being the change of the power in the Ukraine. Modus is observed in this aspect with the help of the method of monitoring. The material containing approximately 800 mediatexts is devoted mostly to the events in the Ukraine in 2014. The mediatexts are from mass media and blogs for 7 months: from February 1 to September 5, 2014. The article does not involve political relations of the four sides - Russia, Ukraine, the USA and EU. The sphere of their interests is analyzed on the basis of mediatexts and for mediatexts with the aim to find a mechanism of modus "transferring" from an utterance into a text, and further on - into a discourse and its "functioning" in it. Moduses of concrete categories (in accordance with the classification by T.V. Shmelyova) are implemented in a text by the method of explication of modus meanings followed by the hypotheses about the intentions of the authors of given mediatexts as well as political motivation of the format as a whole that generates given media material. The author introduces the notions "modus field of discourse" and "modus frame of the policy" of the actions that take place in the reality with further reflection in a number of homogenous texts. While determining these notions, the author demonstrates the mechanism of modus actions in the discourse as well as the goal of these actions. The article shows that modus is an organic semantic part of propaganda as well as a device to disguise and default the genuine intentions of the speakers. But in some cases, under certain conditions, modus is the marker of sincerity of the speakers and writers. Briefly, it is possible to talk about modus in discourse as a logical and psychological setting for definite communication preceding the text. One of the most immanent criteria of mediadiscourse as a paradigm (invariant) are the criteria (coordinates) of genuineness and assessment. Opposing to each other in the "cold war-2014", sides chose different strategies. The strategy of Russian mass media (and pro-Russian authors and formats) is to make a bet on the persuasiveness modus. Western (and "Russian anti-Russian") sides make a bet on assessment. The former one is accepted as objectively stronger and, most likely, the winning one.

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