The media myth creation in the anthropocentric dimension (the english social and political discourse studies)

Abstract

The paper considers linguistic and discursive features of anthropocentric myth creation in the social and political media. Myth creation in the social and political context is viewed as creation of social and political myths correlating with real and fictional events, public persons or social and political phenomena. The author brings into light the role of the media audience as one of the leading factors ensuring successful creation of the media mythological image appealing predominantly to the emotional sphere in the mass recipient’s consciousness. Strange as it might seem, the anthropocentric mythological discourse demonstrates the minimal amount of explicit emotiveness, which creates conditions for independent evaluation of the information by the audience itself. Narrative is considered to be the basic myth creation format. It is represented as a series of stories about the myth creation object. Given the diachronic aspect of myth creation and its chronotope which can span quite a long period of time, it is suggested to speak of the narrative continuum focused on a media person who is in the centre of public attention. It is pointed out that media myth creation takes place on the basis of implications which appear in the process of reception of factual information by the media audience. The interaction of verbal and non-verbal means typical of the media fosters creation of a full-bodied anthroponymic mythological image, which calls for a special study.