Some Features of the Subtext in the Media Discourse of a Publicist

The article points to the problem of defining the subtext and means of its representation in the media discourse of language personalities of publicists. It has been revealed that the subtext is associated with such concepts as implication, presupposition, the deep meaning of the text. The author of the article defines the subtext as an implicit meaning, which is associated with the content-conceptual information of the text and the formation of its deep meaning, taking into account the presupposition, the author’s and the addressee’s social and linguistic experience, the level of their culture, aims and objectives, the nature of the described situation. The aim of the article is to reveal the general and individual characteristics of the subtext and means of its expression in the media discourse of the publicists Vladimir Pozner and Anton Orekh, to define the objective and subjective factors that influence the content of the subtext and means of its representing. The material for the research was Pozner’s blog posts and Orekh’s “Replica” on the Echo of Moscow radio station for April-June 2020. The research methodology is complex and based on the use of discursive and semantic-stylistic analysis. The study of eight posts by Pozner and eight “replicas” by Anton Orekh made it possible to determine the common and different features of the subtext and means of its expression with due consideration of the genre specificity and individual peculiarities of these public information and media personalities. Among the common features of the expression of subtextual information, an explicitly and/or indirectly expressed social assessment of current news, an appeal to a mass addressee, the use of indefinite personal sentences and indefinite pronouns, generalizing judgments without specifying the subjects of actions, euphemisms, metaphors, and irony were identified. The publicists’ individual authorial specificity in the expression of implicit meanings is connected with different levels of acuity and expression in their representation of the social assessment of the news stories they covered, with a different type of speech culture of the publicists, which affects the selection and organization of linguistic means and methods of expressing implicit meanings. Pozner has an elite speech culture, and he is characterized by a restrained-intelligent style in expressing the subtext, the desire to deliver assessments correctly and carefully. Orekh, on the contrary, is characterized by a greater acuteness and openness of his position and an expressive manner of using techniques of reduction to absurdity, grotesque, antiphrasis, playing with precedent texts, irony, individual authorial metaphors. The comparison of the media discourses of the two publicists, completely different in views and idiostyles, has made it possible to determine the common means of representing the subtext used in their media discourse. The objective and subjective factors that influence the specifics of the subtext in the media discourse of the publicists (the sphere of media communication, genrestylistic and thematic features of media texts, idiostyle originality of information and media language personalities) have been determined.

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