Anna Tereszkiewicz

This paper examines the ways in which New Zealand and Polish government officials communicated the easing of COVID restrictions to the general public. The study aimed to identify legitimising strategies used to justify the lifting of restrictions and related measures, and to establish how agency and responsibility were discursively constructed in the subgenre of political press conference in two different socio-political settings. Informed by the notions of legitimisation (Chilton 2004), speaker commitment and stance (Marín Arrese 2011, 2015, 2021), the research looked into the linguistic marking of effective stance (deonticity, assessments, attitudinals and directives) and epistemic stance (epistemic modality, truth-factual validity as well as experiential, cognitive and communicative stance), considering both the subjectivity/intersubjectivity dimension and the explicitness/implicitness of the speaker’s role. In addition, the study considered the key discursive strategies used to (de)construct agency in the discourses of NZ and Polish policymakers seen as proponents of divergent public health policies. As the findings indicate, the Polish officials conveyed chiefly experiential stance and projected less involvement, whereas the NZ Prime Minister favoured cognitive stance and deonticity as well as direct appeals to the audience. The analysis shows that the speaker’s (dis)identification with the respective policy finds reflection in the varying degrees of speaker commitment and the (de)construction of agency.

The study focuses on the strategies of engagement employed by medical doctors in YouTube videos. The goal of the analysis is to investigate multimodal strategies used in selected videos on the most popular medical YouTube channels in Poland. The study is conducted against a theoretical background that considers previous research on engagement strategies in science and popularization discourse (Hyland 2010; Luzón 2015, 2019; Sokół 2018). Engagement strategies involving reader pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge as well as humour, expression of opinions and emotions are investigated, as well as headings, visuals and music. The analysis reveals that medical doctors employ a vast array of diverse engagement strategies which do not form a unified set of practices across the channels. The differences concern the frequency and type of strategies, such as the use of headings, visuals, special effects and music. The study also reveals considerable differences between the videos as to the degree to which the authors exploit the affordances of the audio-visual medium. The formats of the videos comprise both the more traditional, such as slides with a voice-over, as well as more novel approaches, such as presentation films. The strategies employed show that the authors attempt to form a distinctive and recognizable style of interaction with the audience.

* This research was funded by the programme Excellence Initiative – Research University at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Heritage Priority Research Area).

Increasing popularity and dynamic expansion of online newspapers creates a need for an in-depth analysis of online press, genre and discourse properties of online news in particular. The aim of the following analysis is to investigate genre characteristics of a newly developed news structure – a news abstract. The analysis examines the basic conventions concerning the purpose, form and content of these text types. The study encompasses news abstracts published on the websites of leading British, German and Polish newspapers. The inclusion of websites of culturally distinct newspapers was designed to evaluate the degree of universality and internationalization of the structure.

The study concentrates on the phenomenon of user-generated content on the internet. The article presents an introductory analysis of various rhetorical strategies used by the authors of commentaries on one of the popular user-contributory sites, i.e. www.iReport.com. The analysis of this site shows that there exists a range of diverse means of expression used by the enthusiasts of broadcasting online, involving the submission of written articles, live video commentaries, audio files and cartoons. The study shows that users shape the features of the content in different manners and resort to the use of a variety of rhetorical devices. To the main properties of discourse belong personalization, interactivity, use of figurative and vivid language.

The aim of this article is to determine the basic genre conventions of electronic magazines, i.e. e-zines. The analysis illustrates the main characteristic features of e-zines, involving their function, format, content and functionality. The results of the analysis show that e-zines represent a group of heterogeneous forms, exploiting the conventions of other electronic genres, and thus creating hybrid constructions. The article presents a preliminary categorization of electronic magazines, carried out on the basis of the differences in content and in formatting techniques of these websites. The study illustrates as well the most recent trends in the form and content of electronic magazines.

The following paper focuses on newspaper live blogs. The aim of the analysis is to investigate the structure and discourse properties of this news format. The analysis examines the basic conventions concerning the form and content of these text types, including structural components of live blogs, multimedia, quoting and linking patterns, as well as discourse strategies used to underline “liveness”, interactivity and evaluation. The analysis proves that the discourse of live blogs constitutes an example of open structure news discourse, and reflects a blending of discourse properties typical of blogs as well as of broadcast and newspaper reporting.