Linguistic representation of “new sincerity” and sensitivity in media space

The article deals with linguistic features of “new sincerity” and sensitivity in the communicative space of television and radio. Formed in art and literature, these trends are increasingly penetrating the media sphere. The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of genre and thematic, macrostructural representation of “new sincerity” and sensitivity in the communicative space of informational, analytical and science documentaries of TV and radio discourse. The material of the study is 300 radio programs and 400 TV programs broadcast on Belarusian radio in the period of 2015–2022. The corpus of the studied texts is represented by informative and information-analytical genres. It has been established that the directions of “new sincerity” and sensitivity expand and modify the genre configuration and thematic spectrum of media discourse. Dialogical genres (interviews, conversation) become a communicative tool that offers audience ready-made patterns for the perception and experience of traumatic professional and life events. Television and radio create a communicative space of special sensitivity, which becomes a communicative pattern. Within the framework of the subject-thematic field are injuries, addictions, the inner world and human experiences. It is shown that the structural and content scheme of informative and science documentaries texts captures the spectrum of past events in the narratives of participants, eyewitnesses of events representing cultural trauma with a focus on traumatic experiences and emotional experiences. The reconstruction of the historical past and present is aimed not so much at an accurate description of the context of the event, but at empathy and the formation of an emotional atmosphere. It was revealed that during the crisis period the concepts of “new sincerity” are activated in media communication: “public frankness”, “honesty”, “sensitivity”. They are manifested in heteronyms, transformations of information and analytical genres (the genres of review, commentary are modified into the genre of exposure), the category of “the author” (hosts are not journalists) and the communicative tactic of personal history. The saturation of media texts with emotionally, personally oriented topics and concepts leads to a change in the status of sincerity and sensitivity from peripheral phenomena to discourse-forming ones.