Sample of Writing an Annotation for a Thesis

LINGUISTIC MEANS OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL MASS MEDIA TEXTS PRAGMATICS INTENSIFICATION

Graduation Master Thesis from:
Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University
Institute of the International Service, Tourism and Foreign Languages
Faculty of the English and Romance Languages
Chair of the English Philology
Author: Plotnikova Anastasia Vladimirovna [2011-06-22]

Main parts: Contents, Introduction, three Chapters, Conclusion, Bibliography.

Keywords: political communication; political language; political discourse of mass media; innovations in the political discourse; political narrative; impact on the public conscience; information society; mass media discourse; pragmatics of a text; conceptual political metaphors; political and war euphemisms.

Abstract.

The main objectives of this thesis are to analyze and describe the linguistic means of creating and strengthening the pragmatic potential of the socio-political texts of the American and British press, to reveal their influence on the public intellectual and emotional conscience. The thesis is concentrated on the investigation of the pragmatics of conceptual political metaphors and political and war euphemisms as the main language means of affecting public mind and conscience. Chapter 1 deals with the theoretical aspects of the political communication, political language and political discourse; the problems of innovations and linguistic peculiarities of the American political language and discourse are also revealed and described in the chapter. Chapter 1 also represents the problem of interrelation of political discourse with mass media. Chapter 2 gives the general description of the dominant linguistic means of creating and reinforcing the pragmatics of the socio-political texts of the British and American mass media; reveals the linguistic characteristics and political functions of the American and British mass media; illustrates the role of mass media in the information wars.

Bibliography: Keywords: political communication; political language; political discourse of mass media; innovations in the political discourse; political narrative; impact on the public conscience; information society; mass media discourse; pragmatics of a text; conceptual political metaphors; political and war euphemisms. Abstract. The main objectives of this thesis are to analyze and describe the linguistic means of creating and strengthening the pragmatic potential of the socio-political texts of the American and British press, to reveal their influence on the public intellectual and emotional conscience. The thesis is concentrated on the investigation of the pragmatics of conceptual political metaphors and political and war euphemisms as the main language means of affecting public mind and conscience. Chapter 1 deals with the theoretical aspects of the political communication, political language and political discourse; the problems of innovations and linguistic peculiarities of the American political language and discourse are also revealed and described in the chapter. Chapter 1 also represents the problem of interrelation of political discourse with mass media. Chapter 2 gives the general description of the dominant linguistic means of creating and reinforcing the pragmatics of the socio-political texts of the British and American mass media; reveals the linguistic characteristics and political functions of the American and British mass media; illustrates the role of mass media in the information wars. Chapter 3 is devoted to the analysis of pragmalinguistic characteristics of English mass media texts and to the detailed description of euphemisms as one of the most powerful language means used to influence the public conscience; the conceptual political metaphor is described as the main instrument of creating political images and dominating in the American and British press. The investigation and analysis of the American and British socio-political texts and the language means of creating and strengthening these texts pragmatics revealed the following: 1. political and ideological lexical means, conceptual metaphors and political and war euphemisms dominate in the material analyzed and constitute about 1283 units which perform the following functions: first, the function of presenting intellectual information; second, to serve the function of reinforcing the pragmatics of the texts; third, being integrated these political lexical means, conceptual metaphors and political and war euphemisms perform the function of producing the impact on the public and individual conscience of the nation; 2. American and British mass media socio-political texts show that euphemisms functioning in them become one of the most potent instrument of affecting the audience in order to change completely the perception of the events; 3. conceptual metaphors serve as one of the main linguistic methods of creating political images in American and British mass media.