The intertextuality of news headlines in the context of digital media based on the material of the Russian and Chinese languages

Lyu Bo Postgraduate student, Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba; Associate-Professor of the School of Foreign Languages, Hubei Minzu University 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia 1042228094@pfur.ru

Perfilieva Natalia Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-1018-809X PhD in Philology Associate-Professor of the General and Russian Linquistics Departament, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia perfilyeva_nv@pfur.ru

Introduction

News headlines are characterized by accuracy, conciseness, informativeness, expressiveness, attractiveness, etc., reflecting new linguistic phenomena. Research on news headlines, which includes the aspect of intertextuality in both the paper and digital era, attracts a lot of attention from scientists. Currently, against the background of globalization, informatization and digitalization, "digital media is a carefully designed and systematic intertextual product. Digital writing blurs the personality of the subject and creates a large number of intertextual relationships between different texts. Technologies such as hyperlinks, search engines, aggregation algorithms and artificial intelligence have created a world beyond the human mind. Digital intertextuality places people in a huge textual network of mutual connections and mutual links" ^{[1, p. 55]}. This means that in the era of the digital Internet, news headlines form complex and diverse intertextual connections with other texts.

Intertextuality was initially studied in the context of traditional written texts. The term intertextuality was first introduced by Y. S. Kristeva to interpret the intertextual relations of literary texts in the era of poststructuralism. The concept of intertextuality was developed on the basis of M. M. Bakhtin's theory of dialogicity and foreign words. According to Y. S. Kristeva, "any text is built as a mosaic of quotations", as "a product of absorption and transformation of some other text" ^{[2, p. 429]}, and "represents a constant intersection of other texts" ^{[3, p. 46]} or in other words: traces of other people's texts are visible in each text. Roland Barthes believes that any text is an intertext, "other texts are present in it at various levels in more or less recognizable forms <...> Each text is a new fabric woven from old quotations" ^{[4, p. 102]}. "Every text is an inter-text in relation to some other text, but this intertextuality should not be understood in such a way that the text has some kind of origin; <...> the text is formed from anonymous, elusive and at the same time already read quotations - from quotations without quotes" ^{[5, p. 418]}.

In R. Barth's concept, intertexuality is understood as the death of the author, and means an infinitely interacting and dynamic process of reproducing text in text in space and time.

Yu. M. Lotman described the text as "a carrier of integral meaning and integral function" ^{[6, p. 507]}, which "applies not only to messages in natural language, but also to any carrier of integral (textual) meaning – a rite, a work of fine art or a musical piece" ^{[6, p. 508]}. According to I. Zhao, any sign "represents a textual combination" ^{[7, p. 120]}. J. Derrida argued that "nothing exists outside the text" ^{[8, p. 318]}, that the text is a reflection of our subjective perception of the world, it is not just a speech act, but everything what we can know about the world. Thus, the term text has gone beyond linguistics into semiotics. This means that the text can be both verbal, for example, a news headline, and non-verbal, existing in a variety of semiotic spaces, like the famous example of Jacques Derrida with a table, which he also considered as a text. In the broadest sense of the word, a text can be a picture, a video clip, an audio recording, a photo report, a military map, a diagram, a graph, etc.

In the 1960s, the Canadian scientist M. G. McLuhan noted that the very means of communication is a message ^{[9, p. 5]}. With the development of globalization, internetization and digital technologies, "we are experiencing a turning point of the era, a turning point from the era of writing to the era of digital technologies" ^{[10, p.25]}. Using computers to encode, compress and decode information, digital technologies convert diverse information texts, including language texts, pictures, sounds, images, etc. into binary numbers 0 and 1, which can be recognized by data terminals, and then perform operations, processing, storage, transmission, distribution and reproduction. This process is called information bitification. Thus, the text is transformed from a traditional material form into a binary digital one and becomes an electronic bit text existing in virtual cyberspace. American computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte noted that being information DNA, a Bit propagating at light speed quickly replaces atoms and becomes the main element of human society ^{[11, pp. 11-12]}, which allows data to instantly move and exchange on various platforms, which gives texts digitality, dynamism, nonlinearity, polymodality, interactivity, etc. With computerization texts containing or representing multimedia elements, such as images, video, audio, etc., have become easily accessible and widespread in the digital space. Texts can be randomly selected and read on the interactive screen using links. Thus, hypertext came out of the shadows. The reader freely switches between different blocks of information linked to each other by hyperlinks, which in turn form an endless "ocean" of hypertexts. According to Ch. Ugh, in a continuously expanding network, the boundaries of texts are constantly being violated, connected, and then disappear. The text becomes an open text without a center and an end ^{[12, p. 73]}. In other words, in the digital age, texts formed on the basis of a bit are hypertexts, they communicate with each other in the Internet space. In digital communication, intertextual connections realize such properties as openness, nonlinearity, diversity and hyperconnectedness, and become a new digital intertextuality that differs from the traditional one.

The research method. A solid selection of news headlines, linguistic description, functional and semantic analysis, literary method, comparison and classification of selected units allowed us to identify common properties of manifestations of intertextuality of world news headlines of leading Russian and Chinese digital media. The method of linguistic commenting was used to explain such attributes of news headlines as citation, precedent, uncertainty, hypertextuality, polymodality and rhizomaticity.

The sample of international news headlines from leading Russian and Chinese online media in 2023 amounted to more than 1,000 headlines. Well-known authoritative online publications such as RIA Novosti (RF), founded in 1941, and Reference News (PRC) in 1931, were used as sources of headline material. They are one of the largest operating state news agencies, the most quoted media on social networks and media leaders among online information resources.

The results of the study

Attributes of intertextuality of Russian and Chinese digital media news headlines

With continuous globalization and the rapid development of modern digital technologies, paper newspapers have almost disappeared. According to the Data Report, at the beginning of 2023, there were 127.6 million Internet users in Russia, which was 88.2% of the citizens of the Russian Federation. According to a report published on the People's Daily Online website on June 28, 2023, by the end of 2022, the total number of mobile phone users in China reached 1.683 billion, and the number of mobile Internet users reached 1.453 billion, which means that almost every native Chinese speaker has mobile communication facilities.

The "explosion" of information during digitalization and globalization brings a huge amount of news to Internet readers, and Internet media headlines are becoming an important tool in the struggle for readers' attention. In the era of digital media, due to the loss of the visual advantage of paper printing, in particular, the allocation of information in fonts and pins of different colors, digital headlines focus on linguistic and non-linguistic means of expression (photographs or drawings, electronic hyperlinks and hypertexts).

The main attributes of header intertexts are the following:

Quotability is the main attribute of intertextuality, which consists in "an explicit appeal to another text that is introduced and simultaneously distanced using quotation marks" ^{[13, p. 470]} or a colon. Russian and Chinese leading Internet media outlets use explicit citation as one of the frequent features of news headlines in media reports. The reference to an authoritative source confirms the accuracy and reliability of the message. S. A. Zinina noted that "explicated quotations are often in a strong position in relation to the semantic structure of the text (title, epigraph, first line, end of the text)" ^{[14, pp. 35-36]}. Opinions of experts and politicians are quoted to increase the credibility, credibility and attractiveness of the news.

For example, in the headline "We were wrong": the United States recognized a terrible mistake regarding Russia" (07/29/2023, RIA Novosti), the words in quotation marks are a direct quote from the text of an interview with Ex-Pentagon adviser Douglas McGregor, who is an expert, an official, noted that the United States made a mistake in assessing Russia.

The headline in Reference New, 07/30/2023, """ 'Putin: African initiatives echo the content of China's plan' the Russian leader's opinion is often quoted in Chinese online media, including in headlines.

RIA Novosti (RF) and Reference News (PRC) are major global media, their news headlines are compiled according to the rules of the news headline, that is, the headline accurately expresses "a summary of the content of the news text" ^{[15, p. 70]}.

Precedent is also considered one of the main attributes of intertextual news headlines in digital media. The concept of "precedent text" was introduced by Y.N. Karaulov in 1986 to describe well-known stable expressions reflecting the spiritual life of the people and their culture. Later, studies appeared that examined such concepts as: precedent texts, precedent names, precedent situation and precedent statements. According to R. V. Popadinets, precedent is an integral component of communication ^{[16, p. 8]}. In digital news headlines, precedent is actively used to increase expressiveness, informativeness, accessibility, attractiveness, empathy, etc. G. I. Makhtina believes: "The use by journalists of "inclusions" from other people's texts into their own works has become a leading feature of modern journalism" ^{[17, p. 60]}.

In Russian and Chinese headlines of global digital media news, precedent phenomena are often observed in the form of direct quotation or transformed quotation, which figuratively express the essence of events and contain an explicit or implicit assessment of the addressee of the news. For example, in the article with the headline """"'By doing this, the United States creates a tooth-for-tooth situation between China and the United States' (07/19-2023, Reference News), it is a repost of an article in the American media, which says that U.S. investment restrictions in China will undermine diplomatic efforts. The expression "a tooth for a tooth" is quoted from the Old Testament as a talion, which hints at the assessment of the event by the author of the repost.

The headline is "The mind behind the Bazum has gone. Russian White House has not found any traces of Wagner in Niger" (RIA Novosti, 28. 08. 2023) is a transformed Russian phraseology mind over mind. Bazum is the surname of the President of Niger, Mohamed Bazum, who was overthrown in a military coup on July 26, 2023. The transformed headlines often reveal the witty judgments of the author of the article.

Hypertextuality is an "immanent property of the Internet environment" ^{[18, p. 61]}, representing "the potential and realized possibility of nonlinear reading of a text, as well as a textual unity consisting of two or more texts" ^{[19, p. 8]}. The term hypertext was proposed by Ted Nelson in 1965 to describe arbitrary writing and readings. Extending Ted Nelson's original definition, R. Koskimaa defined hypertext as digitally interconnected fragments of language in cyberspace ^{[20, p. 3]}. In the digital age, hypertexts are a synthesis of linguistic and non-linguistic means, including pictures, graphs, images, videos, audio recordings linked to each other by hyperlinks. Hypertexts are linked by hyperlinks called the "heart of the World Wide Web." ^{[21, p. 62]}, which is characterized by decentralization, deconstruction, and nonlinearity, openness, interactivity and multimedia texts in the Internet space. In digital media, each news headline is both a hypertext and a hyperlink linking to the news and the corresponding headline on other portals. For example, the headline """ 'American media: Pride and duplicity moves the global South away from the United States' (06. 06. 2023, Reference News) not only links to the text of the news, but even are on the web pages of various sites, reprinted by a number of leading Chinese digital media. And the transformed name is ‘Pride and Duplicity' also references Jane Austen's English novel Pride and Prejudice. The title is also a hyperlink that expands the space and time of intertexts on the Internet, allowing readers to find out previous news related to this news.

Polymodality, that is, image verbalization and headline visualization, manifested by a verbal-visual news headline complex, is also a major attribute of news headline intertexts. With the development of Internet technology on today's websites of Russian and Chinese information portals, almost every headline is accompanied by its visual counterpart. According to S. I. Simakova: "Visualization of information is literally one of the most obvious trends in the development of modern media. The avalanche–like increase in the amount of information, the saturated media agenda, the strengthening of clip art as a trend of media perception – all this leads to the fact that a much larger amount of information is offered to consumers by the media in a format as close as possible to their desires - visual" [22. p. 207]. The information saturation, concreteness and accessibility of the photographic image make it easier to read the news. The visual narrative images of reality added by the addressee of the message correspond to the topics of the headlines. Headline photos often explicitly or covertly reflect the author's approach to the content of the message. According to M. I. Sedova, any image carries a visual idea, "the image and the text form a new verbal-visual form, which is wider and more interesting than its visual and verbal components taken separately" ^{[23, p. 72]}. A photo report and a headline, as two different methods of narrating the same event on a news site, serve the transmission of messages, and their combination makes up a verbal and visual headline, the synthesis of form and content is a manifestation of polycode and multidimensional intermediality in the context of digital media.

Uncertainty is becoming a trend in world news headlines. The stylistic technique of uncertainty, i.e. incomplete disclosure of information using pronouns in the title, is used to make the reader interested and click on the title. Due to the loss of such advantages of the printed layout of a paper edition as the use of "color callouts that highlight the most striking fragments of text so that it "catches the eye" of a potential reader,"font and size highlighting ^{[24, p. 3]}, as well as the small size of the phone screen, caused the reception of uncertainty It has become actively used in the headlines of news in Russian and Chinese digital media. For example: the headline "No one held her" (06/20/2023, RIA Novosti) produces several questions for the reader: who is she? And what happened?

The Title """--" 'They lobbied on wall street, the adoption of the "new action" against China, and the result was...' (14.09.2023, Reference News). Two uncertainties: who are they?, a truncated sentence quoting the content of the text: what was the result? Thus, ambiguity is often created in news headlines by using pronouns, structural and semantic truncation.

The stylistic ambiguity technique resembles the popular way of constructing a clickbait header. The word clickbait is borrowed from English in a phonetic way: click ‘click’ + bait ‘bait', has a pejorative connotation. In the online dictionary Dictionary.com clickbait is explained as "a sensational headline or piece of text on the Internet designed to encourage people to click on an article on another web page"^[25].

Rhizomatic. Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Felix Guattari coined the philosophical term rhizome, describing the entangled woven root system of a plant, to interpret such phenomena of poststructuralism and postmodernism as connectivity and heterogeneity, openness and nonlinearity, decentralization and multiplicity. The scientists noted that rhizomes are distributed in a deterritorialized space, extending in all possible directions, connecting with other rhizomes that "have neither beginning nor end, neither source nor purpose" ^{[26, p. 434]}. Further, the rhizome principle is used as a "structure-forming factor of a postmodern text" ^{[27, p. 119]}. According to L. N. Sinelnikova, rhizomatism is "a strategy and a pattern of text generation in many modern communicative and discursive practices" ^{[28, p. 805]}.

In news headlines, there is rhizomatism at the levels of both texts and attributes. First, at the text level. Being electronic bit hypertexts, news headlines are distributed like numerous information modules and are located in a huge digital space and time. They are open and interconnected by hyperlinks in the Internet space. It is an arbitrary, multidimensional structure that corresponds to such characteristics of the rhizome as decentralization, nonlinearity and multiple correlation possibilities. Secondly, the main attributes of the news headline also show intertwined connections. For example:

The headline "Pandora's Box is open, no one is safe, Erdogan said" (08.12.2023, RIA Novosti) contains several attributes of intertextuality:

§ quotability – a direct quote of what Turkish President R. T. Erdogan said;

precedent – the precedent name of Pandora's Box (an artifact from Greek mythology, a symbol of the source of great and unexpected troubles), a precedent expression and a situation to open Pandora's box – to cause many unforeseen disasters);

§ polymodality – a photo report with a photo of R. T. Erdogan has been added to the title, which is a non-verbal part of the complex title;

Hypertextuality – both the linguistic headline text and the non-linguistic photo report of the complex headline, as hyperlinks, link to the text of the news article. In addition, the headline and its transformed forms refer to news texts that can be read on various web pages of other media, such as: "Erdogan: Pandora's box is open, now no one in the world is safe anymore" (08.12.2023, Zen), "Pandora's Box is open": Erdogan said that no one We are no longer safe in the world" ( 08.12.2023, TutNovosti), etc.

Also, the headline """"""""to return or not to return, this is a question" (02/27/2023, Reference News) contains a transformed famous expression of the character of W. Shakespeare to be or not to be, that's the question, which is simultaneously a transformed quote, precedent expression, uncertainty, polymodality and hypertext.

Representing a typical attribute of news headlines, rhizomatics at the level of texts and basic properties forms a network maze of news headline intertexts, like the rhizome itself.

Conclusions

T. A. van Dijk noted that media messages represent specific types of text and conversation ^{[29, p.108]}. In the context of digital media, as typical media intertexts and a key expression of news, the headlines of world messages convey the latest information. The analysis made it possible to draw the following conclusions:

In the era of the Internet and digital media, the concept of intertextuality manifests itself as a complex linguistic and non-linguistic phenomenon, including in news headlines and media texts in the digital environment;

The main attributes of the intertextuality of the headline intertexts of world news from Russian and Chinese leading digital media are citation, precedent, hypertextuality, uncertainty, polymodality and rhizomaticity;

In the digital age, a news headline is both a hypertext and a hyperlink, since hypertextuality is the main property of any digital text;

Russian and Chinese media tend to have uncertainty in their news headlines.;

The headline complex made up of verbal and non-verbal text (photo report, video, audio recording, etc.) has become an accepted template, the polymodality of headline intertexts enriches the content and forms of news reports;

News headlines in Russian and Chinese media are characterized by non-linearity and dynamism, interconnectedness and confusion, openness and decentralization, which are also manifested in the headline intertexts of world news from leading Russian and Chinese online media.

The research includes linguistics, communication, sociology, culture, international relations, psychology, education and other fields, it has interdisciplinary practical research significance. The results of the study can be used in theoretical research in the above areas, as well as in pedagogical practice.

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