Interaction between religious, historical and literary discourses in mass media

The present paper refers to the essentialproblem of the interaction between variousdiscourseswithin the framework of American media discourse based on the articles of the online version of National Geographic journal. Currently, the media discourse is a point of intersection of various discourses interacting in accordance with the intention and pragmatic goals of the journalists. Media discourse becomes poly-discursive, as journalists strive to demonstrate the presence of identical or similar components of situational cognitive models in different discourses. The relevance of the research is determined by the significance of the impact that the combined discourse has on the process of persuasion and on the reader’s consciousness. The authorsconsider the process of interaction of discourses, which occurs by means of symbols included into the media discourse. The purpose of the studyis to analyze the language signs belonging to different discourses and representing certain situations, which turn out to be juxtaposed within the media discourse. The authors also analyze the language means of highlighting the dominant components of the represented situational cognitive models, which are also foregrounded due to the interaction between the signs of different discourses. The authors used such methods as the method of discourse and semiotic analysis. The authors come to the conclusion that due to the inclusion of signs of historical, religious, literary and folklore discourses, media discourse acquires the character of a poly-discursive one. As a result, a combined discourse is created in which all interacting discourses are simultaneously represented, and all of them influence the perception of each of them and all of them altogether, endowing the same object at the same time with different characteristics, and thus presenting it from different points of view. As aresult of the superposition of different mental spaces – frames, a new frame is formed, which simultaneously comprises all those represented in the media discourse. The presence of signs of various discourses, the phenomenon of poly-discursiveness is determined by the journalist’s goal to draw attention to the religious side of life, the importance of comprehending religion through history, literature, folklore, and cinema.