RESEARCH TEXTS

The group of research texts includes article, letter, review. Texts of investigation, versions, confessions, press releases, distinguished by modern journalism theory can hardly be called independent genres. It is rather a peculiar kind of article (investigation, version), correspondence (press release), essay (version). What distinguishes research texts? First, reliance is not on the description of facts, but on their logical and rational analysis. In the center of the narrative is the system of reasoning of the publicist, sometimes emphasizing abstractedly from the facts he uses. Secondly, not only the facts personally observed by the journalist, but also information obtained in other ways are widely represented in texts of this kind. To create a convincing picture of the phenomenon under study, the author widely attracts various sources of information, sometimes juxtaposes opposing points of view, resorts to extensive quotations. Thirdly, the style of the research texts, while preserving the features of the individual language of the publicist, is nonetheless a scholarly exposition of the problem.

Article. If in correspondence the publicist analyzes a specific social situation, relying on personally observable (or independently discovered) facts of reality, then the generalization in the article is broader. It provides a comprehensive analysis of phenomena, processes and problems. Based on the facts of social being, the publicist considers the laws of the evolution of reality in its various manifestations - political, economic, moral, cultural, etc. At the same time, the publicist does not just illustrate the idea with examples from life (as is sometimes thought), but puts a fact into the basis of his research. As a rule, in the article the author operates with groups of facts that create a certain social situation, i.e. range of problems united by a single process.

The article “Nobody's old?” (“St. Petersburg Gazette”) is dedicated to the fate of old people who live on full state support. It is not difficult to guess that this problem is moral ("In St. Petersburg boarding schools for the elderly ... dozens of people live, completely forgotten by their relatives. Why are there forgotten ... Most often, their own children and relatives send them out of sight"). "It seems that much more than the devaluation of the ruble, the devaluation of moral values ​​has hit us," the newspaper writes. Specific destinies become the starting points of reasoning: a) the state assumes the functions of relatives — children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, caring for the elderly; b) material interests are sometimes more important than the fate of specific old people; c) the society is clearly not strong enough to provide the elderly with a quiet life, although a certain movement in the right direction is carried out.

Since an article is always a detailed search for patterns, structurally it is a chain of conclusions (from the particular to the general or from the general to the particular). This determines the composition of the story, and the place of fact in the text. Today it is hardly possible to say that the fact in the article occupies a subordinate place, only illustrating certain theoretical positions advanced by the author. A modern article actively incorporates elements of other genres — reportage, essay, correspondence, and interviews. It becomes more emotional in tone, more personal, although, of course, the development of thought remains the basis of its structure.

What are the genre features of the article?

Ø Large-scale expansion of the boundaries of narration - the space-time limits of the text are determined by the scale of the facts and their diversity (globalization of the problems discussed);

Ø The facts used by the publicist can be drawn from various sources - personal observations, meetings, processing of documents, media speeches, letters to the editor, etc .;

Ø The structure of the text of the article is a complex of statements, reasoning, judgments and conclusions, that is, a system of evidence based on the identification of causal relationships between individual facts;

Ø a certain objectification of writing: the text is most often sustained in the intonations of strictly scientific vocabulary, the publicist operates with images-concepts, images-theses; hence the appeal of the publicist to the logical-conceptual, categorical apparatus, clarity of formulations.

Publicistic review is one of the oldest newspaper and magazine genres (it is enough to recall the famous literary, economic, social and moral reviews of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Belinsky, Minaev, Shelgunov, Blagosvetlova, Saltykov-Shchedrin). Giving priority to the efficiency of other genres, the review is a text that records fundamental events and phenomena to their fullest extent for a certain period (daily international review, monthly theatrical review or, for example, Telenedelya in Izvestia, etc.). According to its characteristics, a review is a specific genre, close to correspondence, to the article, and to the commentary. With correspondence, it is brought together by reliance on the facts of reality, with the article - the movement of thought, with commentary - an obvious personal beginning, the dominance of the personified point of view. But these same factors and bred review with forms of journalistic creativity close to him. If in the correspondence the publicist operates with a group of facts united by a single, relatively narrow topic, then a review can be used a variety of data to make the narrative multi-dark. The multifamily leads to the fact that the composition of the text acquires a “chain-episodic” character: the author’s thought moves from the description and analysis of one episode to another.

What are the specifics of the review as a genre? First of all, its substantive basis is not a mechanical conglomerate of disparate information, but a set of social facts in the form of a panorama of the life of the whole society or of a particular sphere of it. Each of them is considered not in isolation, but as an element of a more extensive whole. At the same time, the main consideration is not the author's reasoning, but the events, phenomena, processes in their essential expression. Panoramic image is achieved by the fact that the journalist offers, on the one hand, the widest possible coverage of reality, and on the other hand (by analogy with the panorama as a painting) - a different depth of image: close-up, medium, general. A close-up is the facts personally observed by the author, reproduced in separate episodes, pictures, and replicas. The average plan - a description of the emerging social situation, processes and phenomena. The general plan is the establishment of the relationship between individual facts, the creation of a holistic picture of reality in its contradictions, the identification of the general laws of development of the social world, the creation of the actual panorama of events.

Review, on what EP paid attention in due time. Prokhorov, universal in content and form. This universality of the genre is determined by the fact that as a subject of research, a publicist takes real life in its various manifestations: in the media there are reviews of customs, processes occurring in art, economics, politics, science, military affairs, sports, etc. The survey is universal and for its intended purpose, since it sets as its task to reveal patterns both at the existential, even everyday level, and at the national, international, civilizational scale. Finally, it is universal, because elements of other genres in its text do not appear as alien inclusions, but as natural components of the structure. Extremely significant and figure of the author. A journalist and columnist is not just a system-minded person, an erudite in a certain field, he combines the functions of a keen observer, deep analyst and master of the exact word. A review is a journalistic genre, which is a picture of reality based on a variety of facts in the form of a panorama of the life of society. In recent years, thematic review dominates in the domestic media.

A letter (a variant of the name is an open letter) should not be confused with mail that comes to the editorial office from the audience. As a specific genre of periodicals, it occurs infrequently, its appearance, as a rule, is caused by the severity of problems that require immediate resolution. In this sense, it is necessary to speak about the letter as a operative-research genre, although its formal efficiency is noticeably weakened by the fact that the facts stated in it most often have already become public. At the same time, the letter is a very publicistic genre, because it offers the audience a personalized point of view that requires a response. The genre originality of the letter is characterized by the following features:

Ø a communicative chain can be clearly seen in the text: the author — the problem — the addressee. The personal addressing of the letter in combination with its problematic nature makes the message as up-to-date as possible;

Ø The core of the text is a problem requiring immediate resolution;

Ø both the identity of the addressee and the identity of the author are clearly visible (references to the facts of his own biography, mentioning episodes from the life of the addressee, etc.);

Ø The material is based on the principles of “soft argumentation”: it weighs the pros and cons, the text is a confidential (albeit public) conversation with the addressee.

Thus, the essential nature-forming component of the letter is its rigid structure, which involves discussing the problem by the author and addressee, as it were, in the presence of an audience. At the same time, the emphasis in the narration is easily transferred from the author's perception of the problem to the description of the situation itself or to the person of the addressee. Hence, the various stylistic intonations enshrined in the text: intimate dialogue, monologue, and oratory. A letter is an epistolary genre of journalism, in the form of a public appeal to a specific person or team, raising actual problems that require immediate resolution.