The present research paper delves into the power of journalism’s discourse through a comparative analysis of literary and non-literary journalism. Drawing on the metaphorical imagery of periscopes and kaleidoscopes, the study aims to explore how journalism’s discourse shapes readers’ perceptions and interpretations of events, blurring the line between reality and fiction. The paper adopts a qualitative research approach with a phenomenological design. Through in-depth analysis and interpretation, the study examines the power of fictional and non-fictional journalism, drawing upon the concept of metaphor to describe how the discourse of journalism operates. The research questions are explored within the frameworks of Post-Truth, Linguistic Relativism, and Transcendentalism to gain a comprehensive understanding of the power inherent in these two genres of journalism. The empirical material for this research comprises a wide range of literary and non-literary journalistic texts, including articles, news reports, and narrative journalism pieces. Additionally, scholarly works discussing the impact of journalism’s discourse on readers’ perceptions are included to provide a holistic view of the subject. The study reveals that journalism’s discourse, whether in literary or non-literary form, holds a double-edged power over readers’ minds. Utilizing the metaphorical comparison of periscopes and kaleidoscopes, the research highlights the relative and manipulative nature of journalistic language. Moreover, the power of literary journalism, bolstered by imaginative and creative writing techniques, exerts a profound influence on shaping readers’ worldviews. The research emphasizes the significance of understanding journalism’s power in shaping public opinion and perception. While acknowledging the complexity and nuance of this phenomenon, the study underscores the need for continued research to gain further insight into the workings of journalism’s discourse in a rapidly evolving media landscape.

The research aims to conduct a functional analysis of the opposing conceptual metaphors ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ within English headlines from BBC and The Guardian news between 1999 and 2023. The relevance of this study lies in the need to explore the lexical meaning of fundamental theological terms based on the unreal cognitive constructs in the context of evolving social paradigms. Various research methods were employed, including continuous sampling, classification, thematic analysis, definition analysis, and semantic analysis.

The findings indicate that the conceptual metaphor ‘hell’ possesses a broader semantic field compared to ‘heaven,’ both in terms of definition and function. Metaphorical usage is prevalent, but headlines also feature ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ within idiomatic, emphatic, allusive, direct, zeugmatic phrases, and contaminations. These metaphors encompass thematic areas with polar connotational meanings:

Hell: Politics (political instability, struggle, political figure replacement, anti-crisis measures), Social life (reforms, discrimination, limitations, mandatory expenses), Crimes (abuses, threats, harassment, assaults, victims), Nature (natural disasters, difficult conditions, environmental catastrophes), Sport (injuries, competition, psychological attacks, overcoming), Entertainment (poor quality service, bad habits, imbalance, disruptions), Travel (unforeseen circumstances, transport collapses), Culture (culture shock).

Heaven: Politics (political decisions, electoral victories), Social life (festivals, feasts, family relations, relationships between generations), Crimes (controversy resolution, search for solutions), Nature (biodiversity, renewal of nature), Sport (victories, lucrative contracts, goal achievement), Entertainment (parties, bright performances, romanticism), Travel (pleasure, rest, nature), Culture (acquaintance with outstanding cultural objects, visiting cultural events).

This research demonstrates that the dichotomous representation of the conceptual metaphors ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ is marked by polyfunctionality, driven by the universal evaluative component inherent in their meaning, rooted in the implied polarization of the concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ The emotional and moral dimensions contribute to heightened news perception and effective communication within media discourse.

The present paper is dedicated to describing the conceptual framework of contemporary English-language media linguistics, using materials from the informational educational news website, The PIE News. The PIE News serves as a vital conduit for disseminating information about professional activities, playing an increasingly pivotal role in the global educational landscape. In the current geopolitical context, there is a heightened focus on enhancing educational systems and reshaping the priority positions of professions within disciplinary policies. Consequently, the integration of new technologies into the educational process becomes paramount for the successful development of competencies required to train specialists in popular fields. The aim of this research is to analyze the linguistic characteristics of English-language mass media texts concerning international professional educational activities. The scientific novelty of this study lies in its examination of the functional potential of linguistic markers within the texts. The authors have identified that educational discourse is manifest not only in the body of the publications but also in their headlines, affirming the axiological orientation of the contemporary professional landscape. The analysis of linguistic markers reveals that the metaconcept ‘Education’ encompasses concepts such as “updated educational programs,” “methods of financial support,” “expanding the global network of educational centers,” “collaborative initiatives,” and “enhanced competitiveness.” The linguistic features of these markers are characterized by various abbreviations, providing evidence of the universal principle of language economy in modern virtual mass media discourse. However, these abbreviations, while efficient, can occasionally complicate information comprehension. As a result of this study, the authors draw conclusions about an emerging trend in education characterized by the development of short-term educational projects, primarily in a distance format, combined with professional activities, thereby fostering greater workforce training mobility within the modern labor market.

This article presents the results of a linguo-stylistic analysis of a Germanlanguage commentary within the context of public political internet discourse. The analysis aims to identify distinctive features specific to this genre. Empirical material consists of over 200 comments on internet posts made by the German political party “Alternative for Germany,” selected through random sampling. The study applies both general scientific and linguistic methods, such as discourse analysis and contextual analysis. The relevance of this chosen topic is justified by the need for research in the field of internet linguistics, particularly in addressing genre-related issues. The goal is to determine, identify, and describe the characteristic features of commentary as an internet text. The article thoroughly examines the approaches taken by German linguists to define the concept of “invective,” encompassing lexical-semantic perspectives, speech act theory, and post-structural discourse analysis. Additionally, the analysis of the material reveals that invective is a hallmark of German political internet discourse, with manifestations in both explicit and implicit forms. The article discusses implicatures, arising through irony and metaphorization. The author concludes that metaphor can serve as a tool of persuasion. Metaphor, as a persuasive device, involves the intentional alteration of the mental representation of a given object based on the metaphorical image imposed by the manipulator. This typically includes exaggeration in some aspects of the metaphorically represented phenomenon while diminishing others.

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked worldwide efforts to combat the health crisis, including vaccine development and distribution. However, varying political responses to vaccination policies complicated public discourse and influenced vaccine acceptance. This research paper employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to compare (de)legitimation strategies used in Tanzanian political speeches by two presidents: late President Magufuli and current President Samia Suluhu Hassan. The study focuses on their approaches to legitimizing or delegitimizing COVID-19 vaccines in 2021. Two speeches were purposefully selected based on their relevance to vaccination decisions. President Magufuli employed strategies such as discrediting experts, discrediting others, denial, conspiracy theories, and making accusations to delegitimize vaccines. In contrast, President Samia justified vaccine acceptance using strategies such as authorization, moral evaluation, emotional appeals, and rationalization. These differences in approach can be attributed to their respective ideologies. President Magufuli, a populist leader, displayed scepticism towards Western medicine and promoted local solutions, while President Samia presented herself as a pragmatic leader who prioritizes scientific solutions and international cooperation in addressing health crises. The findings shed light on the complexities of public health communication and vaccine acceptance in Tanzania.

This article examines the concept of “newspeak,” created by J. Orwell in his novel “1984,” which functions as one of the means of manipulating the political consciousness of people. The article focuses on the linguistic manifestation of newspeak in the speech behavior of modern German politicians. It reveals two main functions of newspeak in the speech of modern German politicians: confusion and reinterpretation of established concepts. The article explores the corpus of lexical means of German political newspeak, which are realized in the form of framing, empty phrases, paradoxical word constructions, borrowings, neologisms, clericalisms, lexemes with ambiguous meaning, and words with multiple meanings. Among the grammatical means peculiar to newspeak in German political discourse, the article describes the inclusive pronoun “wir,” passive voice, and the conjunctive irrealis in combination with the adverbial modifier of manner. The pragmatic means of realizing newspeak in German political discourse include the imposition of presuppositions, weak efforts to fulfill the intentions, and hyperbolization. The conclusion is drawn that, unlike in totalitarian societies, politicians in democratic countries use newspeak to compensate for the failures of their party, which turns out to be unable to fully implement its declared intentions, mainly through linguistic manipulations.

The current paper is aimed at corpus-based differentiation of near-synonymous lexemes with the meaning ‘to destroy’. The research implies a series of consecutive steps: to discuss synonymy-related problems in modern linguistics; to compile a list of near-synonymous lexemes with the meaning ‘to destroy’ by means of Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA); to analyze and compare definitions of the chosen verbs in Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWD); to generate lists of right-context collocates for each of the verbs in COCA; to put the collocates into semantic clusters and compare the obtained clusters. The list of lexemes under study contains such verbs as ‘destroy’, ‘ruin’, ‘break’, ‘obliterate’, ‘raze’, ‘annihilate’, ‘crush’, ‘devastate’, ‘wreck’, and ‘demolish’. As a result, semantic clusterisation of the right-context collocates helped establish that all verbs of the group collocate with the lexemes representing values and threats where destroying values evokes negative feelings and associations while destroying threats is perceived as a positive action. The verb ‘ruin’ is typically used with the clusters ‘meals and food’, ‘holidays’, ‘leisure activities’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘human relations’, meaning deprivation of enjoyment and happiness. The verb ‘break’ has a wide array of collocates resulting in a variety of conventionalized expressions. The results of the corpus-based research of lexical semantics may be helpful to those professionally engaged in second language teaching as well as in translation and lexicographic practice.

The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive methodology for conducting both traditional and modified content analysis using transcripts of spoken language from video bloggers as source material. The specific focus of this research centers around video content dedicated to reviewing retro automotive vehicles. The authors delve into two fundamental branches of pragmalinguistics, namely the implicit and functional aspects, while also detailing the analytical techniques employed within these paradigms. The practical application of these methods is illustrated using the oral speeches of the blogger Alexander Chikunov as a case study, providing a clear and tangible demonstration of the process for diagnosing individual personality traits. The initial phase involves an analysis of the material through the lens of implicit pragmalinguistics, encompassing the frequency analysis of speech patterns within the context of selected linguistic strategies, coupled with rigorous statistical data processing. The outcomes pertaining to a specific blogger are subsequently juxtaposed against data from other bloggers within the same genre, thereby facilitating the identification of shared, stereotypical, and unique personality characteristics attributed to the blogger. Moving forward, this article highlights individual traits of the blogger, which were discerned through traditional content analysis techniques. Finally, the study involves an insightful interpretation of the acquired data, culminating in the development of a nuanced portrait of Alexander Chikunov’s speech behavior. A notable aspect of this research lies in its pioneering effort to discern and systematize linguistic features exclusively found within the domain of video blogs. This is achieved by utilizing unscripted spoken language from bloggers as empirical evidence, adding a distinctive dimension to the study’s scientific novelty.