Criticism of the media language: Questions for discussion

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the four directions of modern media linguistics — criticism of the media language (CM). The main prerequisites for the design of CM are the logic of the development of modern linguistics, which demonstrates a steady increase in attention to the communicative capabilities of the language realized in different discursive spaces, the movement of active language processes into the media space and the resulting conflict between the traditional idea of speech culture and the new requirements for the effective use of language resources. The author draws attention to the solution of many installation issues that are recorded in the dictionary-directory Medialinguistics (2018). The uniqueness of the research field of the Kyrgyz Republic is presented in the collective monograph Media Linguistics of the Slavic Countries (2020), which is a milestone for Slavic media studies. But the goal of the author of this article is to identify the discussion areas that have already been identified in the relevant research field. The author attempts to present topical, debatable, issues focusing on the previously stated criteria for evaluating media speech: effectiveness, correctness, ethics, aesthetics. The key findings are as follows: 1) the normative concept of media speech is formed in the process of dialogic interaction between the competent professional community “processing the language” and philologists who are able to comprehend the results of this “processing” on the basis of a detailed analysis of the speech situation in the mass media; 2) the most important task of CM is related to the satisfaction “the need for generally understandable, correct language”, which corresponds to the establishment and preservation of national unity and “political and economic integrity of the state” (the idea of N. I. Tolstoy); 3) the most indisputable when recognizing several controversial moments are the criteria for the effectiveness and correctness of the media speech; 4) one of the most serious debatable issues arises in the area of ethical and aesthetic reflection of criticism related to the verbal representation of the comic category in Russian mass media.