Features of the lead in a publicistic article in contemporary German media

The work is conducted within the framework of media linguistics. The aim of the study is to construct a structural-semantic model of the lead. As a result of the analysis, the authors conclude that the lead of a publicistic article possesses specific formal and content-related features. The lead conveys the content of the primary text of the article but functions as an independent communicative unit, possessing a specific set of standard content components. Based on their function, different components can be distinguished in the leads of publicistic articles. These include components of an exploratory nature, informing the reader about the content of the article, and components of a promotional nature, attracting the reader’s attention to the main text. Content components of an informative nature, in terms of their relation to reality, can be divided into objective components, describing certain facts and events, and subjective components, conveying the author’s attitude towards certain facts and events. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the work determined the frequency of different content components of leads and, based on this, constructed a model of the lead, the most common in the texts of German-language online publications.