TY - JOUR

T1 - Humour as a strategy for news delivery: the case of Meduza

AU - Васильева, Виктория Владимировна

AU - Иванова, Любовь Юрьевна

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/4/3

Y1 - 2021/4/3

N2 - In this article, humour is viewed as a strategic resource for informing in media discourse. It is analysed through the case of “Evening Meduza”, a Russian-language nightly newsletter, received via email or Telegram messenger. A media linguistics analysis of polycode hypermedia text is used to identify communicative linguistic means, contributing to a comic reinterpretation of news on the paratextual, intratextual and visual-illustrative level. News messages in the newsletter are created in the format of compressed “packagings” (a term borrowed from Chafe) with embedded links, following which an addressee goes to the page with source text or concomitant informational resources. Humour is analysed in packagings as well as in whole text and paratext blocks. Humorous means are revealed in three vectors of analysis: empathy in packaging texts, paratextual focus interaction, and news visualization. The change of narrative perspectives in text packages allows the authors to shift the focus of contrast within a newspiece and create humorous content while showing empathy to readers with different presuppositional expectations. The author’s signature always includes a prepositive ironic addition (attribution) that highlights one of the issue’s news elements and forces the audience to reread the newsletter in order to understand the semantic relation. Subheadings create a comic contrast, focusing on individual parts of the reference content while preparing the reader to perceive the news of the day interconnectedly. A mandatory humorous component in the block “And – picture” was found to show the news event in a visual semiotic code using a demotivator style that expresses a pun.

AB - In this article, humour is viewed as a strategic resource for informing in media discourse. It is analysed through the case of “Evening Meduza”, a Russian-language nightly newsletter, received via email or Telegram messenger. A media linguistics analysis of polycode hypermedia text is used to identify communicative linguistic means, contributing to a comic reinterpretation of news on the paratextual, intratextual and visual-illustrative level. News messages in the newsletter are created in the format of compressed “packagings” (a term borrowed from Chafe) with embedded links, following which an addressee goes to the page with source text or concomitant informational resources. Humour is analysed in packagings as well as in whole text and paratext blocks. Humorous means are revealed in three vectors of analysis: empathy in packaging texts, paratextual focus interaction, and news visualization. The change of narrative perspectives in text packages allows the authors to shift the focus of contrast within a newspiece and create humorous content while showing empathy to readers with different presuppositional expectations. The author’s signature always includes a prepositive ironic addition (attribution) that highlights one of the issue’s news elements and forces the audience to reread the newsletter in order to understand the semantic relation. Subheadings create a comic contrast, focusing on individual parts of the reference content while preparing the reader to perceive the news of the day interconnectedly. A mandatory humorous component in the block “And – picture” was found to show the news event in a visual semiotic code using a demotivator style that expresses a pun.

KW - medialinguistics analysis; tools of humour; humour in news; paratext; polycode

KW - humour in news

KW - medialinguistics analysis

KW - paratext

KW - polycode

KW - tools of humour

UR - https://www.europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/546

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104079460&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/dbf2d5b4-90d5-3b18-9e2e-f166d16cc38e/

U2 - https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2021.9.1.Vasileva

DO - https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2021.9.1.Vasileva

M3 - Article

VL - 9

SP - 105

EP - 128

JO - European Journal of Humour Research

JF - European Journal of Humour Research

SN - 2307-700X

IS - 1

M1 - 8

ER -