The interaction of the categories of expressiveness and evaluativity in personal genres of the US media discourse

The aim of the given research is to elucidate the correlation between lexical stylistic (expressive) devices and their contextual evaluative meanings in the genres of blog and column of the US media space. The categories of expressiveness and evaluativity are the most essential for adequate understanding and interpretation of modern media in the context of technological convergence, information exchange speed increase, tangible transformation of genre systems, and increased subjectivity. The results of linguo-stylistic, contextual, componential and quantitative analyses attest to some similarities as well as a number of significant differences in the expressive and evaluative organisation of the genres in question. The study has determined that idioms and similes are used as intensifiers of primarily negative evaluative meaning in both genres, whereas metaphors and epithets are utilised to augment the positive evaluative meaning in blogs and the negative evaluative meaning in columns. Unlike the column, the genre of blog is characterised by a wider range of combinations of lexical stylistic devices and the evaluative meanings amplified by them. Particularly in blogs, the phenomena deemed as negative can be stylistically presented in the light of positive evaluative meaning; the phenomena which are traditionally considered positive are shown through the prism of negative evaluative meaning; both positive and negative evaluative meaning can be attributed to the same phenomenon within one text; the shift from positive to negative evaluative meaning and vice versa can be observed within the ambit of sustained metaphors. 

expressiveness, evaluativity, genre, blog, column, media discourse, media space, stylistic device, linguo-stylistic analysis