LEXICAL CODE OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH MEDIA TEXTS

Abstract

The article presents the in-depth study of the lexical code of contemporary English-language media texts as a system of verbal means that represent the key concepts of contemporary social discourse – “freedom,” “innovation,” “identity” and “crisis.” It analyses the formation and functioning specifics of the lexical code as a cognitive discursive mechanism for social, cultural and ideological meaning representation. The findings demonstrate that the vocabulary of modern English-language media not only reflects social processes, but also actively influences their interpretation, setting certain cognitive and emotional frameworks for information processing. The methodological basis of the study is a combination of cognitive-discursive, contextual-semantic, pragma– linguistic and content-analysis methods. The inquiry is based on the texts from British, French and American media outlets: BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, etc. The research explored the lexical-semantic strategies employed to articulate the key concepts and described the manipulative potential of lexical selection in determining the ideological stance of media texts. The aim of the article is to investigate the lexical code of contemporary English-language media discourse as a multi-level system within which lexical units, emotionally colored vocabulary and lexical stylistic devices, neologisms and expressive means perform cognitive-conceptual, evaluative and manipulative functions. It was determined that the concepts of "freedom", "innovation" and "identity" structure the media picture of the world, shaping social value orientations and affecting ideological priorities.