Discourse markers of the credibility category in English-language news media texts

Abstract

The study aims to identify the discourse markers of the credibility category in contemporary English-language news media texts, applying the discourse-dictemic model of communication. The scientific novelty of the study lies in describing credibility as a discourse category and identifying its markers at the proposematic and the dictemic level. As a result, it has been found that the credibility category is modelled in media texts in three ways: firstly, the use of ethical or formal discourse markers, such as quotations, utilisation of proper names, presentation of numerical data, photos and videos, only ensures ethical or formal credibility of news media texts; secondly, within the field of problematic credibility, different pragmatic orientations of news media texts can be realised in dictemas; thirdly, credibility is realised in narrative and argumentative dictemas through textual (dictemic) cohesion, forming a specific semantic space where specific syntactic language means serve as discourse markers of credibility.