Linguistic Means of Implementation of Entertainment-Oriented Communicative Strategies and Tactics in the Genre of Sports Analytical Article

Introduction. The premise that any communicative act is purposeful and pragmatically conditioned has led to a new approach in studying speech behaviour that involves an analysis of texts from the perspective of strategic planning. Examining constitutive strategic and tactical characteristics of sports analytics helps understand how mass media shape sports discourse. The study attempts to present a classification of communicative strategies and tactics applied in sports analytical articles to entertain the audience as well as analyze the linguistic means that verbalize them. Methodology and sources. Linguistic analysis technics such as corpus analysis, discourse analysis, interpretative and semantic analyses along with some elements of quantitative analysis are used. The study is grounded in pragmalinguistics and uses the principles of communicative linguistics together with pragmastylistics. The material comprises a corpus of 110 English sports analytical articles. The study aims to identify and classify strategic and tactical characteristics of sports analytical articles and their linguistic realization. Results and discussion. A classification of the strategic and tactical characteristics of the genre based on goal-oriented criteria is suggested. Achievement of the entertainment-related communicative goal is realized through strategies of attracting and retaining reader attention. The strategy of attracting attention employs the tactic of nomination implemented via: interdiscursivity, brand names, rhetorical questions. The strategy of retaining attention involves the tactic of dialogization implemented via colloquial lexis, rhetorical question, unification devices as well as the tactic of creating a comedic effect implemented via ironic utterances. Conclusion. The findings demonstrate that communicative strategies and tactics used in sports analytical articles are characterized by unique linguistic realization. The inherent features include: high density of intertextual references, intimization and dialogization devices, colloquial lexis, elliptical constructions and ironic statements.

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