This special issue continues the discussion of the role of emotion in discourse (see Russian Journal of Linguistics 2015 (1) and 2018, 22 (1)) which, as testified by the burgeoning body of literature in the field, has become more prominent in different spheres and contexts of public life. This time we focus on emotionalisation of media discourse. We highlight the intensification of emotions in media and, showcasing contributions from international authors, critically reflect on constructions, functions and pragmatic purposes of emotions in media discourse. Our aim is to investigate emotions in the media from semiotic, pragmatic and discursive perspectives against the contemporary socio-political background in which traditional notions concerning the role of media are being noticeably changed. In this introductory article, we also put forward an agenda for further research by briefly outlining three main areas of exploration: the logics of media production and reception , the boundaries of media discourse, and the semiotic resources deployed to construct emotionality . We then present the articles in this issue and highlight their contributions to the study of linguistic representations of emotions. We then summarise the main results and suggest a brief avenue for further research.

In the modern period, tourism is one of the most important global industries. It often appears to guarantee contact with nature, claims to protect habitats and respect principles of ecological sustainability. This paper explores Sicilian tourism and its representation in publicitary material from an ecolinguistic perspective. It asks what kind of imaginary of nature in modern Sicily can be viewed through such shots of the natural world, how these imaginaries might reflect current ecosophy, and how compatible they might be with ecological principles. It applies the heuristic notion of ‘imaginary’, current in social sciences such as sociology, psychology, and anthropology, to the context of ecolinguistic enquiry, asks how our ideas of a place and its ecosystems may be socially or culturally determined, and how these factors play into a mindset which may, or may not, be ecologically sensitive. The findings suggest that tourism photographs tend to present place images that conform to strict generic criteria, responding to public expectations and pragmatic, commercial requirements. They neither present reliable images of Sicily, nor contribute to the propagation of a specific sense of place, but rather conform to a generic pattern that tends to homogenize tourist destinations at a global level.

This study explores the degree to which politeness and emotive considerations are respected across two different academic traditions and linguistic settings; in Russian and English blind peer reviews. It analyses 120 authentic reviews (70 Russian and 50 British English) with the negative verdicts: “Reject” and “To be resubmitted after substantial revisions” using a pragmatic, contextual and contrastive methodology. Drawing on (im)politeness theory, intercultural pragmatics and cultural studies, we explore the construction of alternative meanings in reviewers’ messages, and theorize that consideration for the face requirements of the reviewee may account for the lingua-cultural choices of the reviewer. We explore structural, linguistic, communicative and stylistic differences in English and Russian reviews. The results show that despite reviewers’ individual styles there are some culture-specific traits in the styles of reviews. Emotive politeness, we have suggested, appears to be (pre)determined by the sociocultural context and is more typical of English communication than Russian. We account for the differences in terms of sociocultural context, value differences and the use of different mechanisms of politeness. Our results confirm that politeness is not only social, but is also a psychological phenomenon based on empathy, whose manifestations may vary across cultures.

In a context of increasing globalization of academic discourse, considerations of the impact of culture on different communicative genres and discursive practices become more relevant than ever, as the construction of pragmatic meaning and its appropriate interpretation by the recipient is seen to depend on lexico-grammatical features whose use is greatly affected by cultural factors. This paper concerns the genre of blind peer review, and examines how disagreement and negative evaluation are expressed in two cultural and linguistic settings, and to what extent they are mitigated. It is based on peer reviews submitted, in English and Russian, to the Russian Journal of Linguistics, in which the reviewer provides a negative evaluation (either “reject” or “to be resubmitted after substantial revisions”). Such reviews entail possible face damage, in the terms of (Brown and Levinson 1978); and therefore one might expect reviewers to engage in discursive strategies of mitigation. The paper analyses 120 authentic blind reviews (70 Russian and 50 British English), using a pragmatic, contextual and contrastive methodology. Drawing on discourse analysis, intercultural pragmatics, (im)politeness theory and cultural studies, we explore the construction of alternative meanings in reviewers’ messages, and theorise that consideration for the face requirements of the reviewee and politeness strategies, may account not only for individual but also culture-specific choices. The results show that, as well as variations in reviewers’ individual styles, there are some culture-specific traits in this area. Mitigation strategies are more typical of English communication than Russian. We account for these differences in terms of the sociocultural context, value differences and the use of different mechanisms of politeness. Our results suggest that politeness is based on different communicative styles and expressive traditions, which appear to vary across cultures.

In the current climate ecolinguistic research has arguably never been more important, as its basic premises regard the survival of life on Earth and key philosophical questions hitherto under-acknowledged by mainstream science. In recent decades, environmental thinking has made great advances in shaping current opinions towards nature and the non-human world. The goal of this paper is to explore certain currents of mediated thinking in modern Britain regarding nature, in order to assess how far expressions of sorrow for the felling of a prominent tree might correspond to a genuine ecological sentiment. The study explores public responses to an apparent case of eco-vandalism, the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree in September 2023 in Northumberland, using data taken from social media and other online sources such as e-newspapers. From the point of view of Ecolinguistic theory and that of Positive Discourse Analysis it applies critical lenses such as Evaluation and Discourse Pragmatics to dig beneath the surface of texts produced on the topic, in order to explore diverse current attitudes to trees in the UK. The paper finds that, though there are instances in which people appear to express grief for the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree, it is possible to account for these in ways that lessen the likelihood that they are motivated by purely ecological sentiment. In practice human attitudes towards trees tend to be superficial and instrumental, and this tendency is also found here. The Sycamore Gap event brings many latent social attitudes into play, and this paper thus contributes to the developing field of Ecolinguistics by focusing on tree-centred narratives, distinguishing between inherent ideologies of pseudo- and authentic environmental sensitivity.

This paper problematises political satire in a time when the COVID-19 virus has provoked numerous deaths worldwide, and had dramatic effects on social behaviour, on a scale unknown in western nations since World War II. Most populations have endured lockdown, periods of enforced domestic imprisonment, which led to images of the empty streets of big cities appearing in media, symbols of the drastic changes that the health emergency was making necessary. Yet, from the outset, comic memes began to circulate across (social) media, while in mainstream print media political satirists continued to lampoon official responses to the ongoing crisis. The paper thus aims to explore the connection of political satire and humour, asking two principle research questions: firstly, how to explain the humorous effects of these multimodal artefacts in such depressing circumstances; secondly, from a pragmatic perspective, to account for their overall socio-political function.The study uses memes taken from various online sources (Facebook, Twitter, Google) during the crisis, analysed according to a mixed approach that blends notions from Humour studies, especially incongruity (Morreall 2016), with insights from linguistic pragmatics (e.g. Kecskes 2014). The findings emphasise the emotional dimension of this form of satire, as the memes work against the backdrop of a range of feelings (anger, bitterness, disappointment, frustration, despair, etc.), many of which have been widely generated by the COVID-19 crisis and political responses to it. In short, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin (2008: 378), man may run out of tears but not of laughter. The findings contribute to our understanding of online satire as an emergent genre, one that uses the affordances of new media to extend the social potentialities of a traditional subversive discourse form.