Vitaliy Palahniuk
Kamianets-Podilskyi Ivan Ohiienko National University
Scientific supervisor: H.A. Kryshtaliuk, PhD
RESPONSIVE REACTIONS IN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE
Responsive reactions are important ways of event conceptualization in the English newspaper discourse. Responses, being part of communicative behavior in discourse, have been investigated from the pragmatic-communicative perspective [1; 2]. But we find no papers devoted to their study in the English newspaper discourse.
Newspaper discourse, being informative and influential, constructs varied events and produces responses of different types. This paper is aimed at clarifying the term “responsive reaction” and specifying its realization in the newspaper discourse. The data has been collected from the digital newspaper the Washington Post.
Responses enrich discourse, consequently, different communicative discursive styles of responsiveness have been developed [4]. Responsiveness means that the addressee conceptualizes the obtained information and reacts to it. It is a reaction to the social, political, global, or local stimulus. From the communicative stance, it is a verbal or non-verbal reaction to the informational message.
In the newspaper discourse, responsiveness is the reaction of the participants, editorial board, contributors, or other people to an event. The reaction is conceptualized within the text or hypertext. According to van Dijk, one of the components of newspaper compositional structure is verbal reactions. Verbal reactions are certain consequences when a news event calls for comments from event participants or related individuals, i.e., political leaders [4, p. 54]. Verbal relations are part of commentaries and responsive reactions.
Responsive discursive space emerges within or beyond the event. Responsive reactions are considered to be inseparable from the newspaper discourse. They provide homeostasis, i.e., the ability to keep the dynamic balance within the discourse where the events are constructed.
In the newspaper discourse, all responsive reactions can be subdivided into neutral and specific. Neutral responsive reactions do not have an individual author, they belong to officials or newspapers, underlining the objectivity and unbiased status of the news. Let’s illustrate this type of reaction. The news given in the headline below is accompanied by a neutral responsive reaction:
Headline: Intelligence officials suspect Ukraine partisans behind Nord Stream bombings, rattling Kyiv’s allies [5, 7.03.2023].
Neutral response: There is still no forensic evidence from the blast site that concretely ties the sabotage to any country, officials have said [5, 7.03.2023].
The given above is the neutral responsive reaction indicating the absence of evidence and belongs to the unidentified officials.
The specific responsive reaction has got a certain author and belongs to the direct or indirect event participants, indicating the subjectivity and biased nature of the news:
Specific response: The Nord Stream bombing provoked a significant and continuing NATO response. “We have doubled our military presence in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea,” Stoltenberg said. “We have also increased the cooperation between NATO countries to exchange information and to strengthen preparedness to better stop further such attacks in the future.” [5, 7.03.2023].
The given above fragment demonstrates the specific responsive reaction and indicates its intensity and duration. The addressee of the given responsive reaction is NATO. The reaction itself is marked by the noun response and is embodied in the military and reconnaissance preparation of the alliance.
Thus, the contemporary English newspaper discourse verbalizes responsive reactions embodied in different actions or their absence. In the newspaper discourse, language units are used which explicate or implicate responsiveness. Responsive reactions may signal the degree to which the addresser goal is reached. The perspectives of research are in the further study of responsiveness in the contemporary English discourse.
References
- Avdeeff, K. (2021). TikTok, Twitter, and Platform-Specific Technocultural Discourse in Response to Taylor Swift’s LGBTQ+ Allyship in ‘You Need to Calm Down’. Contemporary Music Review. 40(1), 78-98. https:// doi: 10.1080/07494467.2021.1945225
- O’Keeffe, A., Adolphs, S. Response tokens in British and Irish discourse: Corpus, context and variational pragmatics. Variational Pragmatics. 2008, 69-98.
- Thomson, C., Kleine, M. (2016). Varied responses as means to the richness of discourse: reading tough texts through speaking and writing. International Journal for the scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 10(1). Article 5. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2016.100105
- van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News as discourse.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
- The Washington Post. URL: https://washingtonpost.com