COGNITIVE AND PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF FOOD REPRESENTATION IN THE BRITISH AND RUSSIAN MEDIA DISCOURSES

The present article is devoted to the problem of representing food in the British and Russian media discourses. The author analyzes social and linguistic factors of food representation in the media discourse, in particular, the ideas and social factors that influence the journalists as well as peculiarities of the linguistic forms of food representation. Particular attention is paid to the cognitive aspects: the author analyzes realization of a specific cognitive model within the media text. The author also studies the cognitive model components, which are foregrounded in the media texts, and the linguistic means used for this purpose. The reasons for this process are also investigated. The connection between cognitive model realization and the journalist’s pragmatic goal is also studied in the paper. The author comes to a conclusion that a new cognitive model is formed and fixed in the recipient’s mind, because its components contain information confirmed by data in the media text. The new model can be fixed only if a journalist manages to persuade the recipient using the factual data. We suppose that introduction and placement of a new cognitive model into the recipient’s mind results in changing his/her attitude towards British food. This can be viewed as a change in social reality, i.e. construction of new social reality, because the recipient in this case acquires a new feature – new attitude towards British food that affects his/her actions in real life. The author comes to a conclusion that the process of food representation in the British media discourse is determined by the aim of constructing a specific identity of the British nation, which differs from the identity that has existed before. The author also analyzes the process of constructing a new cognitive model within the Russian media discourse; this model is aimed at assessing the current market trends and economic and social situation in Russia.