Precedent texts as linguistic mechanisms for creating an attractive newspaper headline in the Internet media discourse

Abstract

The article examines newspaper headlines produced using precedent phenomena, and thereby they act as effective linguistic mechanisms for creating media text attractiveness. The research material is comprised of newspaper headlines obtained from the online versions of "Rossiiskaya Gazeta" texts for 2023 and 2024. We used cognitive discourse analysis in conjunction with a comprehensive methodology for examining active processes in language. We assume that headlines convey certain information about the text content and can perform text-forming and evaluative functions. The study analysed the sources of headlines based on precedent phenomena, types of precedent text transformation, functions of using precedent texts to create newspaper headlines in the modern Internet media language. The research shows that precedent text sources in the headings are well-known works of literature and art, phraseological units and proverbs, the so-called catchphrases, other set expressions and clich  es. Structural-semantic, semantic proper, and pragma-semantic models for transforming original precedent texts were identified. The paper also characterises such functions of using precedent text in headlines as the informative, text-forming, persuasive, expressive, evaluative, and attraction functions. We conclude that the considerable persuasive, attractive, and evaluative potential of precedent phenomena in headlines is most often realised in transformed precedent texts. This is associated with the foregrounding of cultural information known to readers due to its link to a specific precedent phenomenon. New information relevant to a particular author in a particular text is superimposed on the familiar cultural information in a figurative, playful form.