Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Moscow State Linguistic University

Department of Humanities and Applied Sciences

Diploma paper

Lexical stylistic devices (epithet, metaphor, metonymy) as means of shaping public opinion on the basis of American newspaper articles.

S.A.Nikiforova

Group 0103

Scientific Supervisor:

S.M.Safonov

Head of the Department:

Professor, PhD, K.M.Iriskhanova

Moscow

2012

Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации

Московский государственный лингвистический университет

Факультет Гуманитарных и прикладных наук

Дипломная работа

Лексические стилистические приемы (эпитет, метафора, метонимия) как средства формирования общественнного мнения на материале американских газетных текстов.

Никифорова С.А.

Группы 0103

Научный руководитель:

Сафонов С.М

Заведующий кафедрой:

профессор,кандидат филологических наук, Ирисханова К.М.

Москва

2012

CONTENTS:

Introduction.....................................................................................................4

I Theoretical issues (I would call it “Chapter I”)

1. Classification of epithets.............................................................................7

1. Stylistic approach. Affectively evaluative epithets....................9

2. Semantic classification of epithets. Associated and unassociated epithets..........................................................................................................16

3. Structural classification of epithets: composition and distribution....................................................................................................17

1. Metaphors……………………...................................................................20

   1. Traditional classification…..…………………………………21

   2. Alternative classification……………………………………..23

2. Metonymy……………………………………………………………….28

II Practical issues (I would call it “Chapter II)

1. Analysis of the articles concerning Libya……………………...……32

2. Analysis of the articles concerning Russia………………………….36

Conclusions (must be Sg!).......................................................................40

Bibliography.............................................................................................42

Appendix..................................................................................................44

INTRODUCTION.

Modern community lives in an information space, and informational flows have a broad influence on the recipients. Mass-media is one of the main sources of contagion of social, political and cultural ideas. Alongside with that, mass-media is one of the most efficient and productive means of expressing and revealing public opinion and of cogitation in general. Furthermore, it has a direct influence on public opinion by means of shaping it according to the ideological attitude.

The essence of mass-media is the manipulation of social consciousness. During the processing of the material, the author has to collect and to edit certain facts, though their alteration is also quite a common thing. The recipients «digest» the information that has previously been organized in a specific manner, specially structured, adjusted and that characterizes the real world according to the ideological attitude of the «mastermind». While shaping social and cultural values, mass-media is at the same time forming the world-image¹.

The process of forming the informational world-image is first of all based on the creation of certain ideas, images of the depicted objects by mass-media. Image is a mental perception and reflection of events and facts that take place in the world, including the individual's attitude to them. The most important feature of the image is the reflection of the world in the process of its practical creation, in other words, an image is a model of reality that reconstructs the information acquired from the reality as a new entity². This model, that is produced by mass-media, is called an informational model. Besides, the term «model» is usually associated with a cliche according to which the ideas about the depicted object are formed in people's mind.

No wonder that such lexical stylistic devices as epithet, metaphor and metonymy participate greatly in forming the image, or the informational model of a depicted object, in which objects acquire the expression of attributes, objective reality is reflected conceptually, emotionally and aesthetically. Existential elements acquire their completed forms by means of cognitive and aesthetically mediated personality's activity. These stylistic devices appear as a result of reconnaissance and reflection of an object by a subject (maybe “person”?) in the process of its modelling activity. The attributes of epithet, metaphor and metonymy are attended by the peculiarities of the mind itself, its reformatory and intentional character, focused on the object. (Этот абзац – перевод с русского? Очень трудно понять, что имеется в виду)

Epithet, metaphor and metonymy actually convey the subjective attitude of the writer. Therefore, one of the aims of this paper is to single out the main features of these particular stylistic devices' significance in expressing the author’s point of view in modern mass-media. The second one is to trace the achieved desired attempts of shaping the readers’ opinion on the basis of American newspaper articles.

One of the aims of the work is to clarify how epithet, metaphor and metonymy influence the way we think about the world (такая постановка проблемы тянет на пару докторских:) напишите, что они влияют на понимание нами месседжа статей или тп.), perceive it, and secondly how lexical stylistic devices are linked to the worldview. It is worth mentioning that lexical stylistic devices are a matter of not only language, but also thought, and, therefore, on the one hand, they provide us with an ability to visualize and to conceptualize events, and convey the person’s worldview, on the other. Thereby, all these stylistic devices are powerful tools which can create its own reality. (reality of the author not of the device!)

During the analysis of newspaper articles that takes place (is presented?) in the second chapter of the paper key features are singled out, the! complex of which helps to make explicit a unified image of the Middle East, formed by the American mass-media. The reason for choosing this particular topic is that military conflicts (maybe articles about conflicts) reveal the processes of shaping publiс opinion in the full manner (maybe just ‘fully reveal’?) and, therefore? help to achieve the main goal of the paper – to investigate how different authors shape a unified image and a unified information model by means of the same “set” of epithets, metaphors and metonymies which can be traced throughout different articles.