The thesis focuses on the study of the key values of the English-speaking ethnic groups in the context of linguistic and socio-cultural paradigms. The verbal means of the concept VALUES representation have been thoroughly analyzed. The study represents the frequency of the key lexemes used in mass-media texts to actualize the above mentioned concept. Both British and American values have been ranked in relation to the frequency of the identified verbalizers. It should be pointed out that in different texts the speech producer may manifest different types of values.
The research has made it possible to highlight the values pertaining to modern culture of a) the citizens of Great Britain (Tolerance, Honesty, Freedom, Justice, Rule of law, Rights and duties, Family, Health, Work, Democracy, Happiness, Success, Community, Consumerism, Patriotism, Respect and Pride for the country, Private property, Money, Public institutions, Market economy, Wealth, Science, Collaboration) and b) the citizens of the USA (Personal control over the environment, Change, Time and its control, Equality / Egalitarianism, Individualism, Privacy, Individual achievement (Status, Success), Self-reliance / Independence, Competition, Future orientation, Action / Work orientation, Informality, Directness / Openness / Honesty, Patriotism, Practicality, Efficiency, Materialism / Acquisitiveness, Risk taking, American liberalism and capitalism).
The latter depends on his or her personal qualities as well as on his or her socio-cultural parameters and the recipient’s respective characteristics. The nominative field of the concept VALUES has been compiled in the research. In addition, lexical units that represent key values of the British and American nations have been singled out and distributed within the nuclear zone, pre-nuclear zone and periphery of the nominative field of the concept VALUES. Considerable attention has been paid to “honour” as a distinctive component of the concept VALUES, which plays an important role in the lives of British and American people.
The study is based on the new linguistic paradigms which describe the peculiarities of multimodal mass-media text creation and perception. It has been found out that verbal components of such texts play a dominant role in the process of their decoding as compared to non-verbal ones. An important point is that in modern studies the text is conceptualized as a multimodal phenomenon incorporating verbal, non-verbal and paraverbal components. The latter interact, complement, modify each other and provide new possibilities for its interpretation. Proceeding from the existing approaches to “text” we have devised our own definition of this term: text in our research is understood as a communicative unit employed by the participants of communication in order to carry into effect their intentions.
The role of visual representation as a non-verbal component of a multimodal mass-media text in actualization of the analyzed concept VALUES has been investigated. Particular emphasis has been given to the informative consonance and the informative dissonance between the verbal and non-verbal components of the multimodal texts in terms of the functional roles of visual representation (images) in them.
The presented dissertation studies the functions of non-verbal components of the texts of multimodal nature. It has been identified that the non-verbal means perform the following functions, namely: attractive, informative, expressive, aesthetic, symbolic, argumentative, satirical and functions of euphemization and image creation. The analysis of the material enabled us to develop the above mentioned classification. Therefore, the functions of media manipulation, evocation, revocation, exemplification, association, evaluation as well as cognitive, stereotypical, metaphorical and cultural functions have been singled out.
The three types of verbal and non-verbal information correlation in multimodal mass-media texts have been revealed in the study, namely texts with full, partial and zero correlations. Thus, full correlation is characterized by the close relationships between verbal and non-verbal elements, whereas partial correlation demonstrates relative independence of the verbal component from the non-verbal one. Mass-media texts with zero correlation are distinguished by the absence of interconnection between the verbal and non-verbal elements.
