The Language Means of Comicality in Clickbait Headings

Abstract

The analysis of material presented in the media discourse demonstrates significant changes in the intentionality of the journalistic text, which are reflected in establishing contacts so as to grab and retain the reader's attention. This feature of modern media text is represented in changing genre preferences, speech tactics and strategies, and, consequently, selecting and combining linguistic means. One of the manifestations of this trend is the phenomenon of clickbait, which is a communicative act of promising to continue communication. This article is dedicated to the clickbait with the semantics of comicality. The collected from the Russian-language Internet research material includes clickbait headings that promise a certain funny content. The study revealed that a clickbait model includes the following semantic components: a stimulating utterance of the subject of speech seeking to involve the reader in the humorous nature of hypertext; the verbal and non-verbal markers of the object of laughter; markers, which reflect Internet user's involvement in the communicative act. The analysis of relationship between the components of a clickbait model resulted in specifying four types of clickbait headlines: 1) narrative headlines, which invite the reader to laugh what some other readers have already laughed at; 2) offering headlines suggesting some comic entertainment; 3) allusive clickbaits that hint on the possibility to continue amusing reading; 4) nominative clickbaits, which name the expected laughing reaction to the presentation of some objects.