Ontological structures in an editorial as a mechanism for the creation of meaning in persuasive press texts

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to characterise the manner in which onto- logical structures are created (at the level of text structure and the information layer thereof) in press discourse on the example of French newspaper editorials describing political, socio-economic conflicts between the public and the gov- ernment. Ontological structures and their conceptualisation refer to one of the stages of development of global meaning in the discourse by journalists selecting and categorising the information they wish to provide to their addressees (gate- keeping). Therefore, according to the methodology proposed by Miczka (2002, 2007, 2009, 2011), connecting psycholinguistics (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983) with the socio-cognitive perspective (Goffman 1974/1986; Langacker, 1987), this pa- per will attempt to describe the discursive mechanisms of creating a common horizon for interpretation in view of persuasive function of the media language (the media declaratives) (Nowak & Tokarski 2007, p. 12). The paper proceeds with analysis of editorials on the basis of the concept of Goffman’s framework teamed with Langacker’s cognitive event, as cognitive schemata organise the structure of the experimental frame. It should also be noted that the persua- siveness in the information layer of the utterance forces to ask the question of the responsibility of the media addresser towards the addressee.