Published 2020-11-04
Keywords
- Internet news discourse, construction grammar, immediate construction, modified construction, extended construction
- новинний інтернет-дискурс, конструкційна граматика, безпосередня конструкція, модифікована кон- струкція, розширена конструкція
Abstract
The article reveals a constructionist aspect of verbalizing extinction in BBC news texts.
The aim of the research, which studies BBC news texts about the endangered species, is to analyse nominals naming extinction as a communicative and sociocultural phenomenon resting on the principles of Construction Grammar about linguistic form and linguistic meaning. Intelligence is based on the fact that Internet discourse as the most effective type of discourse triggered much scientific interest in the field of Internet linguistics. The article studies BBC news texts that dwell on the issues of environmental protection from the perspective of the species under threat of extinction. According to construction grammar the given form and meaning are not independent of each other being inseparably interconnected. Thus, grammarians assume that a language system is based on constructions, which form complex overlapping grammar patterns. Constructions exist as prefabricated linguistic units entrenched in human’s mind ready to be contextually used in certain communicative situations.
Research methods comprise random sampling to determine units representing the process of extinction; discourse analysis to demonstrate verbalizing extinction in Internet news discourse; contextual analysis to focus on distribution and combinability of the nominals denoting extinction.
Results. The research results in distinguishing immediate, modified and extended extinction-constructions from the syntagmatic viewpoint. The constructions were classified in accordance with key extinction factors. Thus, we introduced constructions to denote groups of species under threat, level and stage of wipe out, human activity influencing the wipe out. Additionally, we singled out elements, which manifested extra qualitative and quantitative characteristics of extinction, and suggested collocation models to represent the aspects of extinction.
Conclusions propose a detailed classification of constructions under study, enabling a linguist to follow the trends in semantic change of the nominative units denoting extinction, i.e. their functional potential.
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