About Some Peculiarities of Expressive Syntax in English Popular Press

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of expressive syntax and its role in transmitting the author’s communicative intentions. According to the dominating cognitive-discourse paradigm at present, scientists are interested in researching the manifestations of the author’s perception of transmitted information and their impact on the form of its presentation. Due to the dominating role of mass media in the contemporary world, it seems of great importance to reveal the way they influence the collective mind of the readers. In this connection expressive syntax plays a very important role in the process of communication via media text. The main aim of the research is to analyze functional and linguistic peculiarities of expressive syntax in media texts as a means of the author-reader interaction. In this article the research of the expressive syntax means is conducted on the basis of two English magazines. The topics and cognitive peculiarities of the readers play a great role in choosing proper expressive means and are required to be considered as a system. The results of the analysis show that the main means of expressive syntax in popular press is a parenthetical phrase serving to give the author’s comments, define terms and toponyms, or add extra information, satisfying the readers’ curiosity. The result also shows that due to different cognitive attitudes, types of creation (individual or collective) and segments of its targeted audience, National Geographic articles, unlike The Economist ones, contain more variable means of expressive syntax.