GENRE OR TEXT?

In modern Russian journalism, the concept of “genre” is noticeably suppressed by the concept of “text”. And there is an explanation.

First, together with the old system of media organization (a rigid vertical from top to bottom - from allied to wall newspapers), the former classification of genres collapsed. The process of erosion of genre boundaries was noted as early as the mid-1970s by V.V. Uchenova [3]. The researcher noted that the diffusion of genres contributes to their mutual enrichment, that it is an objective result of complicating human relations with the world, because it reflects changes in the mind of the creator, that the interpenetration of elements of some genres into others contributes to internal transformations occurring in journalistic texts. The process of “revising” genre boundaries has led to the fact that some genres — a report, an interview, correspondence, a report — have ceased to be rigidly attributed only as informational or analytical [4]. At the same time, there was a reassessment of genre values: some genres practically left the newspaper page (essay, feuilleton, editorial, press review), others, on the contrary, increased their presence (interview, commentary, essay). Signs of the newspaper strip have become PR and advertising texts. Finally, some theorists and media practitioners began to identify new genres: investigative journalism, confession, version, conversation, press release.

Secondly, the global expansion of the communication space in connection with the development of new information technologies (the Internet in particular) created natural prerequisites for the unification of genres. Russian journalism, while remaining faithful to its traditions, absorbs all the most productive of Western and American journalism. Having absorbed the features of commentary, essay, feuilleton, a column was fixed on the newspaper page (as an option, a personal rubric on radio and TV). The interview captured the meaningful spaces of the essay, ceasing to be only first-hand news and revealing an undoubted interest in the personality of the interlocutor.

Third, the changes that began in Russia in the 1990s radically changed the nature of the media. The constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech, publicity and the abolition of censorship led to the fact that in post-Soviet society the relations within the communication system “reality - author –product - audience” changed fundamentally. This system is closed, dynamic and constantly renewable. Consider the nature of the interaction of links in this communication chain.

The key concepts united by the category “reality” - fact, phenomenon, character - as if spread their substantive boundaries. With the abolition of censorship, the prohibited facts disappeared, the information field expanded, the possibilities of access to the information necessary for investigation increased. Publicist research began to act as a prognostic. Analysis of hidden trends opened the way to anticipating the future of social processes and situations. In place of the planned projecterism ("the current generation of Soviet people will live under communism") came a pragmatic predictive journalism. The hero of reportage, essays, sketches has also changed. They became a man of everyday life, and not just a man of achievement. Behind the rubrics “Private life”, “Sovetskaya chronicle”, “Out of politics”, “Without retouching” and others there is a natural desire to see a famous politician, a businessman, or a “star”, or a “person from the street” in everyday life, at home, in unexpected situations. The world around us is dynamic, and the task of the journalist is to show this dynamic through the fabric of the experiences of his chosen hero.

The second link of the communication chain has also undergone changes - the author. In response to the greater freedom of action given to him, the publicist willingly offers his point of view on the event. Hence the increase in the status of the commentary, which, from a variety of article, has become an independent genre. Hence, the appearance of a full-fledged genre - a column, that is, a heading, personally assigned to a particular journalist.

It would be a mistake not to see the engagement of a publicist in modern Russian society. Administrative party pressure has been replaced by economic pressure. The interests of the audience can be considered as a counterweight to it. Circulation dependence largely determines the thematic targeting of the text, and the nature of the presentation of the material. The audience from the undemanding consumer of the information offered to her becomes a picky buyer of the goods. The once widely publicized feedback from the media and the audience was measured by the number of letters received, as a rule, the signals about the everyday turmoil faced by the readers. The newspapers were the collective organizer of maintenance, the collective plumber and plumber, the janitor and the electrician. The modern audience actively influences the media with a rating of published materials. You can successfully talk with her only on topics she is interested in.

Sociological studies show that the genre expectations of the audience are less significant than thematic ones. Moliere's Jourdain admitted that he had spoken in prose for forty years without even knowing it. The modern reader uses the concepts of "material", "text", "note", "article", without investing in them some kind of genre meaning.

So the text or genre dominates the modern media? Clarify these concepts. The main feature of a literary text (and a journalistic one too) is that it is deployed in time and space, because it has retrospective relationships — retrospective memory and perspective relationships — predictability [5]. In other words, it interacts strongly with extra-textual factors - context and subtext. The context is understood as the system of social relations that gave rise to this text, the historical time in which the media exists, the connection of the text with the ethnos for which it is designed, with the personality of the author - his biography, individual creative manner, peculiarities of his psychology, worldview and worldview. The subtext is that socio-moral and psychological background that broadens the semantic field of the utterance, making the complete speech structure open for interpretation and further interpretation. The straightness of the task in the journalistic text is obvious, but its interaction with extra-textual elements — context and subtext — gives the material an aesthetic integrity.

The problem of the integrity of the text is of particular importance due to the fact that the blurring of genre boundaries fraught with the danger of loss of taste for the genre [6]: an amorphous work makes it difficult for the audience to perceive the facts, problems, situations, prisoners. The danger of this kind should not be exaggerated: in a journalistic text the unifying element is the personality of the writer (speaker), therefore, no matter how dissolved the genre features within the text are, its integrity is protected. The text performs its task only if it relies on the dominant genre features in it, allowing the author to achieve his goals: a) to provide operational information about what is happening; b) to carry out the necessary analysis of the process being described - to identify the causal relationships that gave rise to this situation; c) create a conceptual-shaped picture of what is happening. The interaction of these goals within the text ultimately gives an opportunity to feel its genre limits.

Here is a typical example - a note published in Izvestia:

The government is preparing for planting. Not having time to really prepare for winter, the government began to prepare for the sowing season, devoting a special meeting of the commission on operational issues to this topic. As always, the main problem today, not counting the weather, is money. Moreover, this year they will need more than in the past. Such a grain harvest, which was obtained in 1998, was the last time 45 years ago. As a result, today, 1.6 billion rubles is needed to provide households with money, otherwise they will sell the last grain stocks stored for sowing. Then - 2.2 billion rubles for fertilizers, 25 billion - for fuel, of which 7 - in the spring. Another "small things" is required by the regions, the federal seed fund, for reseeding winter crops, etc. Total get a tenth of all budget revenues.

Svetlana Babaeva.

A short note in 12 newspaper lines is a text in which in a compressed form there are elements and articles, and correspondence, and feuilleton. The reader is not just acquainted with the list of upcoming costs - he faces a sad picture of our management in the village (“The last grain harvest that we received in 1998 was 45 years ago”). The date is a signal for reflection: we returned in 1953, when the agriculture of the USSR was crushed by exorbitant taxes and incompetent management. The semantic space of a note is expanded by its historical context - a direct parallel arises between the crisis state of society then and now. The first phrase - “Not having time to really prepare for winter, the government began to prepare for the sowing season ...” - it contains a clearly ironic subtext: the government is not only criticized, it is ridiculed. Is this the desperate boldness of a newspaper or a demonstration of the weakness of power? Or is the bias of a publication seeking to overthrow a disagreeable government? In the first sentence - the verdict of all previous activities of the authorities, a sentence calculated for understanding by the audience, well aware of the situation in the agricultural sector of Russia. "As always, the main problem today, not counting the weather, is money." The subtext of this phrase is clear to those who are closely following the political and economic life of Russia. "As always" - stupidly, ill-conceived, nasty. The author fixes his irony with this “as always” note - the weather will, of course, be to blame for everything. But - “as always” - and there is no money. Naturally, the following questions arise: Why does the sector of the economy, which largely determines the strategic security of a country, require a hectic search for funds? why the planting volume will absorb about a tenth of budget revenues? Why are we pushing forty-five years in place, fearing to reform the industry radically?

It is indicative that the author not only lists the size of the upcoming expenses, but also comments on the current situation: “Not having time to really get ready ...”, “More small things are needed ...”, “We need 1.6 billion rubles ... otherwise farms will sell recent stocks of grain ... ”The style of writing refers rather to sketching, correspondence, rather than dryish operative information. Within the material - the specific tasks of the day. Outside - a country trying to solve its problems is still bureaucratic.

The text quoted above is indicative: the information contained in it is sufficient for an emotional impact on the audience. Personal beginning is also palpable.

So who will win the fight on the newspaper page, on radio and television? Text or genre?

Definition of the genre. Cunning theorists prefer to avoid exhaustive definitions. In literary studies, genres imply “types of works that have developed in the process of developing artistic literature” [7]. In publicism, genres are called "stable groups of publications, combined by similar content-formal features" [8]. For all the temptation of these definitions, they do not look complete, although they allow us to speak about the specific nature of the genre.

A genre is a historically specific category , that is, developing in time, undergoing changes in the course of its existence. The evolution of genres is directly related to how people comprehend the world around them. Publicism owes its development to other activities: trade has created the need for the exchange of commercial information - a newspaper was born. From the business relationship to the pages of the newspaper moved the report. From the need for confidential information - a letter. The feuilleton on the pages of the French newspaper “The Journal de Déby” appeared in 1800 as a phenomenon of the democratization of the press: after the French Revolution, it was necessary to conquer an audience, to attract it to one's side. Conservative aristocrats figured it out earlier than Republicans. Thus, the “feuilleton” rubric appeared, uniting the most diverse materials. Gradually, the rubric turned into a relaxed dialogue with the audience, then - into an accusatory genre. The general historical development of genres - from simple to complex - from notes, chronicles in a few lines to serious analytical materials.

A genre is a special form of organization of vital material, which is a specific combination of structural-compositional features. In this case, in the genre we are dealing not with a random collection of features, but with a system of form elements. Since the time of the Roman rhetorician Quintillian, mankind has stuck its nose into all the holes of the Universe, trying to comprehend what is happening with the help of famous questions: what? Who? Where? when? how? why? A bizarre combination of answers to these questions creates a genre. Or more precisely - the elements of the genre in a particular journalistic text. The structure of the note is subordinated to one task - a prompt report on the news, the structure of the interview is to maintain a dialogue that supports the interest of the audience in the journalist’s interlocutor. The structure of the report is subject to the description of the event, reproduced in its essential elements, but not excluding an arbitrary presentation of what is happening (outside the actual space-time sequence). The reportage structure serves to reproduce the process in its actual space-time boundaries: the illusion of clarity arises due to the consistent description of what is happening in the details and details. The relationship between descriptive and narrative components of the text is obvious here.

Genre is a typological category , that is , it has a number of stable, repetitive signs. It helps to understand the meaning of the famous metaphor MM. Bakhtina: “Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development” [9]. The way of reflecting reality in each genre is its own and is predetermined first of all by the cognitive tasks solved by a publicist. If you remember that a genre is, firstly, a specific way of reflecting reality, and secondly, a specific way of analyzing it, the method will appear as a connector of content and form: the character of the facts selected for analysis (the content aspect) is inseparable from the method chosen by the author familiarization with these facts (the formal aspect). In the same way, the form and content of a genre are inseparable in the method of analyzing reality: the argumentation system (content) and the method of comparing facts, the method of presenting arguments create the integrity of the journalistic text. Whether it is an empirical description of facts or an understanding of them, a journalist, dissecting a fact, establishes a causal relationship that makes it possible to see the phenomenon behind a concrete fact.

The content of the text (of any genre) depends on the tasks solved by the publicist, the level of knowledge of reality, on his individual psychological characteristics of the perception of the surrounding world. In general, the content of the text is a combination of an objectively existing fact with its subjective assessment. In each case, such a connection is carried out at various levels of reproduction and reflection on reality: briefly and extensively, in the description of the event and the description of the experience, in the description of the process or in the system of evidence. The content of the text is a reality mastered by a publicist, transformed into a system of facts, reasoning, assessments and conclusions. The form of the genre is predetermined both by the peculiarities of the personality of the publicist (what is called the individual-psychological vision of the world) and by the persistent signs of a journalistic narrative inherent in a particular genre. The set of compositional and stylistic techniques used by a publicist to reproduce a picture of the world or its fragments is great. The main thing here is to draw attention to the described facts, problems, situations: clarity and consistency in the argumentation system; entertaining and wit in the presentation of the material; creating a holistic view of the reproducible social and moral problem that has become the subject of analysis.

Genre is a gnoseological category . The appearance on a newspaper page (on radio and TV) of a particular genre is always determined by the tasks that the publicist decides - what is learned, at what level, for what purpose and by what means. V. Solganik is right when he asserts that the genre is “always an installation on a certain type, way of portrayal, character and scale of generalizations, type of approach, attitude to reality” [10]. A negative fact may be the subject of discussion in a critical note or correspondence, and may form the basis of a feuilletonist's performance.If a publicist does not see in a negative fact the comic contradiction inherent in him, then a critical text appears, if the author reveals the comic content of the fact, a feuilleton appears.

Genre is a morphological category . A journalistic text is a special form of being a work. The volume of cognizable material in a note, interview, reportage, report, correspondence, article is different, which predetermines the structure of the narration - as concisely as possible in the note, developed in the article. In the report there is a support for a detail, for expressive language, for combining various descriptive narrative elements of a text. In the article, the core is the system of reasoning — the propositions advanced are argued, illustrated. The main thing in correspondence is the description of the episodes that make up the general idea of ​​the problem. The center of the note is a one-time reproduction of the situation.

Thus, the morphology of the genre is: a) peculiarities of the narrative structure; b) the place of fact in the narration; c) the imagery of the story; d) the specifics of the development of the problem (conflict).

A genre is an axiological category , that is , it contains a certain assessment of reality by a publicist: any text either approves or denies something. The system of value orientation of the author directly depends on his worldview, worldview, worldview. There are often cases when the same fact is reproduced and perceived in different ways in the press. But since a fact is by nature invariant (that is, unchanged), then the responsibility of a journalist for the accuracy of his submission and for the objectivity of evaluations is also unchanged.

Genre is a creative and creative category . The interpretation of facts, situations, problems by a publicist creates the text as a certain model of the world. Since this interpretation is different for different authors, the publicistic text each time creates a new view of reality in the form of its conceptual and figurative model. The fuller and more convincing this model created by a publicist, the more actively it is perceived by the audience. In other words, an aesthetically organized and imprinted picture of the world encourages an audience for co-creation: a journalistic text acts as one of the means of personality formation. The more diverse the combination of images and concepts in the text, the more active the process of co-creation is, the stronger the feedback in the communicative link the audience is the author.

So what is a genre? The journalistic genre is a relatively stable structural organization of the text, due to a kind of reflection of reality and the nature of the creator’s attitude to it.

Determinism of the genre. Жанр – оптимальная форма решения творческой задачи, стоящей перед публицистом. Поэтому – в отличие от текста – он всегда жестко детерминирован: цель, лежащая в основе решения любой творческой задачи, определяет выбор жанра. Детерминизм (обусловленность) жанра связан: а) с объективными свойствами анализируемого или описываемого факта; б) с конкретными задачами, решаемыми данным изданием и данным автором; в) с мировоззренческими и индивидуально-психологическими особенностями личности журналиста. Творчество публициста носит избирательный характер. Разрабатывая тему, анализируя попавшие в поле его зрения факты, корреспондент еще на предварительной стадии своей работы осуществляет определенный выбор жанра, останавливаясь, в конечном счете, на том, который представляется ему наиболее подходящим. Бытующее среди журналистов-практиков убеждение, будто о жанре предстоящего текста он не думает и тот складывается сам собой, интуитивно, противоречит существу творческого процесса. Интуиция как составная часть творчества способствует рождению целостного текста: текст вбирает в себя необходимые жанровые элементы, подчиняясь логике развития мысли автора.

Genre classification journalistic texts. The previous classification is outdated - and what in return? Modern theorists of journalism prefer to use the terms “news journalism”, “author journalism”, “analytical journalism”. Sometimes texts are grouped according to the methods of collecting and processing information: “reporter journalism”, “figurative journalism”, “commenting journalism”. Meanwhile, whatever classification is proposed, the journalistic text necessarily includes three major components: a) reporting a news item or a problem that has arisen; b) fragmentary or thorough understanding of the situation; c) methods of emotional impact on the audience (at the logical-conceptual or conceptual-figurative level).

In this regard, the texts appearing in the press can be divided into five groups:

1) operational news - a note in all its varieties;

2) operational research - interviews, reports, reports;

3) research and news - correspondence, commentary (column), review;

4) research - article, letter, review;

5) research-shaped (artistic-publicistic) - essay, essay, feuilleton, pamphlet.