Irony and humor in journalism as a cognitive strategy (media and cultural aspects)

Irony as a narrative-cognitive strategy, in comparison with social and ethical analytics in the media or with the entertaining pathos of laughter in journalism, rarely attracted the attention of researchers, although its heuristic potential is self-evident and is reflected in the works of many researchers. The study and explication of the interaction and contradictions of “cognition” and “hedonism” is topical. The purpose of the study: to show, using examples of predominantly English-language texts, the specificity of ironic overtones that create additional narrative expression related to the cognitive strategies of the authors, that is, to the setting for expanding the horizons of knowledge in the context of the modern development of the theory of mass media, communication and literary criticism. Methods of the study: cognitive-contextual, combined with historical and cultural analysis of ironic discourses. The nature of the information and cultural potential of ironic discourses is characterized, taking into account the “postmodern sensitivity”. The pragmatic expediency of the interaction of irony and analytics in the construction of the epistemological paradigm of journalistic narratives is substantiated. Conclusions are drawn about the cognitive-heuristic significance of comic elements in journalistic texts, about the benefits of intrusion of hedonistic values into serious media discourses, about the conflict of interests of “humorists” and “cognitivists” in media narratives and in the science of mass communications.