Popular science articles about animals: Speech genre characteristics and their dynamics (based on the Soviet press of the 20th century and publications in Runet of the 21st century)

The article carries out a comparative genre analysis of popular science articles about animals in the Soviet press of the 20th century, and in the Runet of the 21st century. The research is based on a model that includes the following items: animal; author and addressee; society (community of readers of the article about animals) and the state of literature; language. It is shown that the image of an animal in the article about animals is represented by a number of narrative plots: appearance; nutrition; intraspecific relationships; the birth of the young ones; attitude towards a human, which, being universal, reveal a certain dynamics in details. The image of the reader of the article about animals is also relevant: in the 20th century they were presented as a “simple Soviet person” (tendency for self-education, optimism), in the 21st century – a layman observert, in many ways reminiscent of a tourist: their attitude towards the described animals is characterized by superficial curiosity, a share of indifference, non-involvement, non-empathy, however, not excluding sentimentality. As for the dynamics of the article about animals as a speech genre, the most significant changes are the changes in the state of society / literature: “Soviet society ∼ capitalist society”, “pre-Internet literature ∼ Internet literature”. In particular, the Soviet manner of expression, which was restraint, optimistic and humanistic, is changing to permissiveness bordering on dissoluteness, pedaling “the bottom” and agonal plots. Among the linguistic means of expression in the articles about animals, the author focuses on the method of personification (the similarity of an animal to a human), which at all stages of the development of the article about animals is both a constant factor of the additional interest in the animal and a source of a number of productive models of metaphorization. The main sources of “humanizations”, specific images and precedent texts in the articles about animals are art, fiction, cinema, estrade, etc., in modern times – a new mythology created by “Hollywood-Disney”.

popular science article about animals, speech genre, Soviet press, Runet, expression, personification