Linguistic studies of political media discourse. Media Linguistics

The paper provides an overview of the main trends in the study of the Russian political media
\ndiscourse. Three stages in the development political media linguistics in Russia are identified.
\nThe first two phases developed as part of functional stylistics. The first saw the establishing
\nof the space distribution and the major features of the social and political discourse, the
\nidentifying of linguistic resources role in the expression of these features, and the defining of
\navenues of typological study. The second stage involves analyzing the speech and genre in the
\nstructure of social and political discourse and highlighting the constitutive stylistic features
\nof each of the dedicated text types. The third stage — actual media linguistics — is associated
\nwith the development of a comprehensive praxeological approach, in which political discourse
\nis considered as space for political action. For this analysis techniques developed in different
\nareas of communicative linguistics are used. The analysis reveals the linguistic expression in
\nthe discourse of actors in political life, political relations between them, shows how the genre
\nstructure of the media discourse “adapts” to reflect the ongoing political analysis of reality. As
\na result, the author concludes that the political discourse has become for researchers the field
\nupon which the formation of almost all domestic communication-oriented linguistics takes
\nplace.