Linguistic Embodiment of Values in Internet Media Discourse: A Corpus Analysis of Representative Contexts (the Lexeme ‘po-khoroshemu’)

Abstract

This article explores the linguistic and discursive mechanisms of value embodiment in internet media discourse, as well as the scientific tools for identifying and qualifying them in a corpus of textual data. The study investigates the peculiarities of metalanguage usage of the lexeme ‘po-khoroshemu’ [‘in a good sense of the word’] as a representative context for detecting values of a particular type, referred to as “pseudovalues,” which express relative evaluation: ‘something is good in some respect, but bad in another respect.’ Corpus analysis methodology was employed, using materials extracted from newspaper corpora within the Russian National Corpus. The study demonstrates that the metalanguage expression ‘po-khoroshemu’ serves as a kind of “test” for identifying potential negative evaluativity in nominations that, according to contemporary societal trends, could be perceived as “good” or neutral / non-evaluative. On the other hand, it is established that this representative context indicates an increase in the value register for nominations that are default negatively evaluative. The conclusion is drawn that through the use of the lexeme ‘po-khoroshemu,’ certain evaluations can be imposed on the readership of media texts, which may not have been initially shared by the addressees, thus making the metalanguage expression ‘po-khoroshemu’ an effective means of linguistic manipulation.