NEWSPAPER MACROTEXT AS A TYPE OF TEXTUAL FORMATION

This article discusses the choice of terminology for a set of newspaper publications that appear in consecutive issues of the same online news outlet. These publications represent a single referential situation and together form a larger textual unit. The textual formation examined in this study is both continuous and discrete. It is characterized by narrative features, such as represented space, time and participants, as well as discourse features, including the unity of the authors’ perspective, the expected response of the readership and its connection with the referential situation developing around one or more central events. The study considers three possible terms for this corpus of texts: hypertext, megatext and macrotext. Although these concepts share some common features, each has its own area of application and a specific set of defining characteristics. Hypertext is characterized by fragmentation into separate text blocks, the possibility of moving from one text to another, access from any entry point, the reader’s active role in choosing the reading path and the communicative equality of individual texts united by a common topic which function as parts of a larger textual whole. Megatext, in contrast, is a big textual formation consisting of interconnected texts united by a common theme, referential event or object of representation. These texts are organized into a single semantic and communicative whole. A megatext has an open structure and can be expanded through the addition of new texts that develop its semantic space. Based on the narrative and discourse characteristics of the corpus under study — particularly the relationship between textual and extra textual time, the unity of subject organization and the continuity of narrative development, we argue that the term macrotext is the most appropriate one for describing this type of textual formation.