The category of ideological modality in the English press discourse

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of ideological modality in contemporary English press discourse. From a wide spectrum of modal-evaluative relations the category of ideological modality deals with the attitudes that reflect certain political views and ideological values. In press discourse this category is constituted on the basis of textual components, used to transmit ideologically charged meanings and interpretations, thus making it possible to describe objectively the level of ideological intensity of a text on the basis of the analysis of its linguistic and textual characteristics. The author analyzes the category of ideological modality within the theoretical frameworks of media linguistics, proceeding from the key definition of a media text as a consistent combination of verbal and media components actualized in a certain format and integrated by common message. The study of ideological modality has been conducted on the material of the news and analytical commentary texts from the British and American quality press representing different political orientation (liberal and conservative), which allows us to single out and describe substantial differences in the use of language means for the actualization of the category in question. On the verbal level, ways of expressing ideological modality embrace a wide spectrum of language means, including the use of evaluative words and word-combinations, lexical units with negative and positive connotations and ideologically charged nominations.

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