Peculiarities of Ethnic Stereotypes Usage in English Political Discourse

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight ethnic stereotyping in the English-language mass media political discourse, which is an actual issue since the scope of media texts in English prevails in the global information space, which cannot but affect the viewpoint of an "average" English speaking reader. According to the cognitive linguistic approach, the stereotype is considered to be an element of the cultural and linguistic world view and an integral part of reality categorization mechanism. Ethnic stereotypes are very important in the process of intercultural communication since they can increase its effectiveness and eliminate interethnic problems or they can act vice versa. So auto- and hetero-stereotypes play a significant role in intercultural communication. This fact underlines the relevance of ethnic stereotype studies. The notions of "auto- stereotype” and “hetero-stereotype" are considered in the article, using the examples of English-language political media text headlines. Special attention is given to the headlines of English-language media texts about Russia. Basic features of the stereotype "modern Russia", formed by the English-language media, are defined by the analyzed political media text material.