Linguistic means and techniques for attracting readers' attention in prognostic texts (based on German press horoscopes)

This article is dedicated to describing the means and methods of speech influence in astrological texts. The aim of the study is to identify linguistic means and methods of attractiveness of German press horoscopes. The scholarly novelty of the research lies in the fact that it allows for the discovery of specific linguistic means and methods that exert a pragmatic influence on the addressee in German horoscopes. This contributes not only to a fuller understanding of the pragmatics of the prognostic genre, but also to the precise determination of characteristics typical of a horoscope as a prognostic text. As a result, it was found that attracting the addressee's attention to the textual content in German astrological messages and, as a consequence, manipulating their behavior is achieved through the use of speech influence linguistic means at various levels (lexical, syntactic, and graphic). All the established means actualize attractiveness in the texts under consideration due to their functional-expressive features. Lexical means of expressiveness include, first of all, words with emotionally evaluative semantics. Syntactic means, such as changes in sentence structure, accentuation techniques, parenthetical insertions, also have the ability to exert a fascinating effect on the recipient. In addition, the graphic design of texts of press horoscopes (the use of different types of fonts, punctuation marks, and other graphemic markers) is definitely an additional way to enhance and retain the reader's attention.