“Pseudo-values” in modern Russian media discourse: The experience of logical analysis of implicit evaluativeness in the language of print media

The author of this article examines some specific language mechanisms for expressing a special type of implicit evaluativeness in modern Russian media discourse. The author proceeds from the assumption of the existence of so-called “pseudo-values” in the communicative environment of society, which are understood as non-unconditional values. It is noted that the diagnostic, representative context for identifying values of this type in the speech practice of Russian native speakers is a statement that includes a meta-language commentary “v khoroshem smysle (slova)” (“in a good sense (of the word)”). The goal of the study is to identify the main models of language representation of so-called pseudo-values in modern Russian media discourse. The main research methods are the method of logical analysis of implicit information in language utterances and the method of contextual analysis of metalanguage elements of the text. Based on the material of the Newspaper Corpus as part of the Russian National Corpus, the work shows that values of the new Russian reality, declared as positive in the media, such as a career, competition, individualism, “the West”, fashion, etc., actually act as pseudo-values that are not regarded by native speakers in usage as unconditionally positive ones. This is confirmed by the very possibility of using these nominations in mass media discourse with a clarifying meta-language indicator “v khoroshem smysle (slova)”. Special attention is also paid to the use of this meta-language commentary as a conscious means of speech influence and a language manipulation technique. It is concluded that the use of contexts with the said reflexive in media discourse always has the character of an internal polemic: the speaker diverges from the value stereotypes assigned to the depicted phenomena and concepts in an objective language evaluation, in generally accepted nominations, and in the direction of both increasing the evaluation register and lowering it.