Culturological modality in political media discourse

Abstract

The article introduces and discusses the notion of cultural modality as one of the instruments of forming a peculiar axiological context of political mass media discourse. Axiological context is formed on three levels of information structure of the text which represents the discourse under study: (1) the level of the language verbalization of the message, (2) discursive level formatting the message, and (3) cultural level aimed at translating cultural values and norms into the text. The cultural level is an axiological space within which cultural modality is realized. The evaluation, which this type of modality renders, involves the correlation of the object of assessment with cultural norms accepted in this or that linguistic and cultural community: at the same time scaling “to approve — to disapprove” is performed between the poles of good and evil. Cultural modality is triggered by evaluation markers which explicate value vectors of a particular linguistic and cultural community. Cultural modality is inevitably aligned with ideological modality, which is generated at the discursive level of the formation of the media text, on the one hand, and cultural meanings that are generated at the linguistic level of text formation, on the other. Creating new sources of modalization, cultural modality contributes to agonality of the text. The main purpose of cultural modality in political media texts is to identify us and them, distance oneself from them, discredit or even demonize them. Thus, cultural modality is one of the most important axiogenic sources of the text as a whole.