Models of Interpretation of the Event in the Discourse of the Russian Press

Abstract

The article considers the mechanism of interpretation of reality in the Russian media discourse through the prism of the event – a key category of journalistic text. From the position of the theory of variational interpretation of the text, the event appears as a "verbal construct", which is represented in the media by a certain number (n-number) of interpretative-cognitive models, each of which is constructed by n-number of semantic versions – variants of the author's interpretation of reality. The created model is determined by a number of factors: information expectations of the addressee, communicative intention of the author, specificity of media and socio-political contexts. In this case, the nature of the event (catastrophe event or provocation event) is the starting point for the development of the vector of author's interpretation, setting markers on the basis of which an interpretation field of a monocentric or polycentric type is formed. The first type is represented by one interpretation-cognitive model that dominates the discourse of the Russian press; the second type of field includes a certain (more than two) number of interpretative-cognitive models. The mechanism for interpreting events of different types is examined on specific examples that have received wide resonance in Russian media, e.g. the catastrophe event "The accident with the Bulgaria ship "produces a monocentric type of the interpretation field; the provocation event "The action of the punk group "Pussy Riot" in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior" forms a polycentric interpretation field.

Legislative initiatives in the media: strategies for representation and interpretation

“…In the discursive media space, the opposite processes often develop. The works emphasize that the so-called "collective authorship" of interpretive texts generates a special cognitive environment that forms a system of public perceptions [8], and the redundancy of estimates and points of view transforms the content of the original legal text [ibid]. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to analyze the main strategies of representation and interpretation of laws by the socio-political media of different political orientations.…”