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EDITORIAL: FUNCTIONAL ASPECT
Abstract
While the idea of objectivity is key to mass media text, modern research claims increase of subjectivity. Scholars determine two main reasons for that: influence of online mass media as well as a general sociocultural trend toward confession; diffusion of mass media and political discourses. Being a part of mass media discourse and thus experiencing the above mentioned trends, editorials have transformed in functions in such a way that they no longer aim solely at delivering information but progressively at influencing. We presume that both functions are carried out through objective and subjective modality. The objective of this article is to show how informational and influencing functions co-exist and are implemented in editorials. The leading approaches to the study of this problem are the lexical-semantic method and the method of contextual analysis. The analysis draws on 70 editorials from major American and British newspapers and magazines, including the Nation, the Washington Post, the Guardian. We present a considerable amount of lexical resources used to implement objective and subjective modality. Our findings confirm the dominance of objective modality as well as considerable promotion of subjective modality.
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