Discursive Particles in the Context of the Journalist's Critical Thinking

Based on Russian newspaper articles on politics, economics and culture, the authors examine particles as discursive words that perform an auxiliary communicative function in texts. They pay special attention to the role of particles in the representation of the journalist's critical thinking, which is essential for achieving the communicative impact of a newspaper article. Using the discursive and stylistic approach, the authors define particles as markers of the journalist's critical thinking. They state that critical thinking is a strong discursive factor that has an influence on newspaper texts. The use of discursive particles in a particular text is caused by rational and emotional orientations of the journalist's thinking that operates amid indifferent statement of facts and events. For this purpose, the authors use quantitative data collected from analytical articles published in federal and local newspapers in 2015-2018. Irrespective from the newspaper level, the actively used discursive particles include the negative particle “ne”, the restrictive particles “vsego”, “tol'ko”, “lish' ” and the intensifying particles “i”, “eshche”, “da/he”. The authors present the following results of quantitative, functional and semantic analysis of the particles. (1) The single use of the particle “ne” means the journalist's indifference to facts stated, but its repetitions as well as discursive sets with this particle attach an additional discursive meaning to a statement making its negative character stronger. (2) The intensifying particles “i”, “eshche” and “da/he” correlate with the journalist's emotional and critical thinking and assist in creating the reader's emotional attitude to the given information. (3) The discursive particles “tol'ko”, “lish' ”, “vsego” have semantic restrictions; they correlate with rational and critical thinking and assist in focusing the reader's attention on important parts of the given information. The authors emphasi/e that different orientations of the journalist's thinking operate within the general framework of the journalist's cognitive activity or without a clear differentiation. However, a critical orientation of the journalist's thinking becomes a discursive factor that naturally determines the selection and use of particles. The discursive factors such as “newspaper status” (federal or local one) or “topic of article” (politics, economics, culture) do not significantly influence the use of discursive particles while the factor “orientation of critical thinking” has a regular and consistent influence. The article demonstrates that representations of the journalist's rational-critical and emotional-critical thinking amid indifferent statements inform readers about events and make readers evaluate them.

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