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Copyright © 2024 by Cherkas Global University
Published in the USA
Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie)
Issued since 2005.
ISSN 1994-4160
E-ISSN 1994-4195
2024. 20(2): 181-194
DOI: I0.i3i87/me.2024.2.i8i https://me.cherkasgu.press
Arctic Floating University Diary as the Media Genre Influencing University Students' Perception of the Arctic Issues
Nataliya Beloshitskaya a , Olga Pechinkina a > *
a Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Russian Federation
Abstract
The authors of the article explore the media text of the university site. The discourse of the university site is viewed as an institutional, corporative discourse with a generalized form of the authorship. The subject of the analysis is a scientific expedition's diary. The main objectives of the analysis are to define the key value-charged meanings promoted by the diary's text in the context of the socio-cultural agenda, the main means of those values' conceptualization, and the way the University students perceive these meanings. The authors draw on the semiotic theory of the text, the presentation theory of discourse, and semiotic modelling of discourse. The main methods are semiotic and pragmalinguistic analyses, whereby the key presentemes standing for the dominant values were defined, to prove the findings the authors exploit the quantitative analysis tools. The authors conducted students' interviewing (N=20) with the aim of understanding how the media genre under analysis facilitates students' engagement into the Arctic issues. The results of the interviewing also shed light on the students' perception of the Arctic. The findings show how the media texts addresser's intentions have been implemented. The authors came to the conclusion that playful reinterpretation of reality as the leading model of reflecting the world secured by a number of communicative tactics, mainly tonality change help achieve the main goal of the media texts' addresser - to promote key values through informing, enlightening, and entertaining.
Keywords: arctic floating university diary, media text, media discourse, presenteme, axiological meaning, semiotic analysis, students' perception.
1. Introduction
Media discourse of a university site in the wide sense could be categorized as a corporative, institutional discourse. A specific feature of a suchlike discourse type is the fact that the university itself that is the corporation is the subject of the discourse. The discourse is aimed at two types of the addressee (recipient) - the internal audience (students and lecturers) and the general public (potential applicants, university's partners, and media). The discourse space of the site is a dynamic and semiotically heterogeneous construct. A detailed analysis of a corporative type of a discourse is presented in the research by L.V. Selezneva (Selezneva, 2018). The discourse subject -the university (corporation) - is of a generalized-protagonistic form. "The position of the protagonist (corporation), who initiates the discourse, is supported regardless of the authorship form" (Selezneva, 2018: 171). Exploiting scientific tools used by Michel Foucault for describing discourse, it should be noted that the university acts as a discursive formation, which forms discursive practices, and creates conditions for statements' production in accordance with regulations, norms, and values. The axiological component in the discourse of the university site is
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: o.pechinkina@narfu.ru (O. Pechinkina)
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significant and includes promotion of the value-based meanings through the texts of different genres making up the discourse. The global meta-goal of the university in this respect is to develop the value system of students. The subject of the analysis in this article is the Arctic floating university's diary entries. This genre is non-typical for the university site.
Nowadays there are various ways to denote pieces of writing about traveling: notes of a journey, itinerary, travel essays, account of one's travels, travel notes, travelogue, a diary etc. There is no consensus on the definition of a travelogue but most researchers (Kulakova, 2012; Lvova, 2016; Mamurkina, 2013) agree that the travelogue represents a consistent textual unity with the underlying dichotomy "friend-or-foe" that describes real or imaginary trip as well as the author's reaction to what s/he perceives. Travelogue is a permanent collision of self and non-self that results in an emerging image of the place. Yet, in this research we stick to the term diary, because this is how it is termed in the official discourse on the Northern (Arctic) Federal University site (https://narfu.ru/en/research/expeditions/fu/expedition-2017/diaries).
The researcher M. Stefko considers traveling as one of the forms of cross-cultural communication, a real relocation of a person across the territory of a country with its subsequent description. This definition can be applied to literary works, letters, travelogues, travel essays and others (Stefko, 2010: 4).
According to E. Krivolapova (Krivolapova, 2012), this genre possesses such key features as: a) synchronicity which defines reflection of the reality, b) auto-communication that equates the author and the addressee, c) unpolished material, d) date that constitutes the structure-forming beginning, e) intimacy, f) sincerity, and g) truthfulness of the notes.
Zasypkina concludes (Zasypkina, 2012) that the genre of travelogue incorporates historical data, archaeological data, description of monuments and landmarks, landscape sketches, dialogues, lyrical digressions, etc. but the main role is attributed to impressions of what the traveler notices, portrayal of characters' temper and so on. Rokina (Rokina, 2016) adds that any travelogue has interdisciplinary character and provides valuable information for different sciences such as history, ethnography, anthropology, philology, etc. It should be mentioned that the discourse of the travelogue includes all the main aspects: geographical, political, historical, ethnologic, semiotic, linguistic, praxeological, kratological, axiological and others (Majga, 2014; Rusakov, 2015). Thus, from the viewpoint of the university as a discourse formation, generating and transmitting values, media texts in the form of the research expedition diary (Arctic Floating University diary - AFU diary) present an interesting case for analysis regarding its influence on the students' perception of the Arctic issues. The analysis of both the AFU's diary and the way the target audience (students) perceives it will help understand functional efficacy of this media genre as the vehicle of the university's key values promotion.
2. Materials and methods
We witness the metonymy of the genre - the transfer of the conventionally journalistic genre into the unusual context of the corporative discourse and the transposition of the authorship form -the author remains personified but the coverage of events is carried out from the corporation's position. All these transform semiotic functions of the genre. As for semiotic functions of a text, we uphold the approach, developed by Y.M. Lotman. The approach has long become a classical one. Thus, semiotic functions of a text comprise a creative function (new meaning generation), information transmission, and a memory function: "any text is capable of keeping the memory of the previous contexts" (Lotman, 2022: 28). The transformations of the genre and style of the material under analysis open up opportunities to draw on the conceptual frameworks and research methods of a number of related humanitarian sciences with the aim of inferring the ways to signify value charged components of the corporation's conceptual system as well as the means of key values' implementation. The semiotic approach to the text, developed in the works of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, the presentation theory of discourse by A.V. Olyanich, and the semiotic modelling of a discourse considering 1) tonality-pragmatic and situation and 2) regime-based parameters developed by V.I. Karasik constitute the methodological foundation of the AFU diary analysis. Moreover, the semiotic analysis of media texts is widely used not only by linguists but by pedagogues and educators as well. For instance, A.V. Fedorov and proponents of media literacy and media education applied the semiotic analysis while analysing a variety of media texts (Chelysheva, 2010; Fedorov, 2015; Romanenko, Kozlova, 2022). The semiotic comprehension of reality in the process of creating AFU diary's texts is the process of a possible world construction -
the world of enthusiastic researchers, exploring severe Arctic, and overcoming different kinds of obstacles and perils. Considering social semiotic of the text it is relevant to refer to Michael Hallida/s social interpretation of language - we observe a two-level process: "the social act of narration, and the social acts that form the content of the narration" (Halliday, 1978: 146). Before moving on to the analysis itself, it is necessary to give some important facts to set a complete discursive and social context. The media texts under analysis are on the site of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov (NArFU). The inner cohesion of the corporative discourse is defined by the main lines and the theme of the Arctic is one of them. This theme is clearly traced in the texts of such genres as: "the mission of the university", "the goals of the university": "Mission of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov consists in creating innovative scientific and human resources for the purposes of intellectual exploration of the Russian North and Arctic" (https: / / narfu.ru/en/ university/introducing/mission_goals).
Arctic exploration is regarded as the dominant of the axiological sphere of the NArFU's discourse. The AFU diary's entries could be taken as the confirmation and demonstration of the process of the goal achievement. In the light of the pragmalinguistics approach it is a complex demonstrative. The detailed description of the key research project of the university is a staged unfolding of the discourse. The subject of the discourse presents himself/herself by means of the communicative strategies complex. Following terminology of V.I. Karasik, we define these strategies as the strategy of attraction, the strategy of charging with emotions (emotiogenic strategy), and admirative strategy. The discourse corpus of the AFU diary's texts is well thought-out and spectacular. The theory of the presentative nature of any discourse was elaborately worked out by A.V. Olyanich: "Any text and first of all the text designed for mass consumption undergoes certain 'staging' by the individuals producing this text" (Olyanich, 2004: 175). A.V. Olyanich singles out a special unit of a discourse - the presenteme, which is the smallest unit of the informational impact - a semiotic complex consisting of cognitively acquired by the individual concepts and images, which are being transferred to another individual in the course of communication with the aim of influencing this individual.
Analysis of the 2023 AFU diary's texts as the informative concepts (the first function of the text) and finding key presentemes on the syntagmatic level will allow us to trace the main semantic chains, opening 'content-conceptual' and 'content-subtextual' (Gal'perin, 1981) information of the texts. Generation of new meanings and intertextual inclusions as the memory of the previous contexts will appear on this level of the texts. The analysis follows a three-step algorithm. The first step is finding key dominants of meaning - presentemes. Frequency and diversity of nomination will allow us to conclude about the significance of these objects. A.V. Olyanich in his typology of presentemes sets aside linguosemiotic presentemes (Olyanich, 2004: 262), among which lexical and syntagmatic presentemes are of a special interest for our research. The second step of the analysis is pragmalinguistic situational analysis of the discourse extracts with dominant presentemes. The aim of this step is to define a dominant tonality. Tonality marks leading strategies of communication. The third step of analysis is identification of the axiogenic situations, where value-marked and value-generating characteristics are accentuated.
As the second line of the research, it was important to analyze the effectiveness of the media genre of the diary regarding the promotion of the key values of the University (the discourse subject). The authors have worked out the questionnaire to reveal the students' interest to the Arctic issues and to understand whether their perceptions concur with those intended by the media texts addresser. The students (N=20), participating in the interviewing, are fourth-year students. Some of them are doing their bachelor degree on the International Affairs in the Arctic and others on the Arctic Region of Russia.
3. Discussion
The quantitative analysis allows us to define the most frequently mentioned Arctic objects, states of nature and atmospheric phenomena in the AFU diary's entries The descriptions of the sea and sky are the distinctive leitmotif. The inclusions of description also constitute metatext - lyrical digressions from conveying information may contain rational component in the form of a scientific fact about some nature phenomena. Here is an example: It is calm and sunny today, as if we were not at the White Sea, but at the Red Sea. In the morning, we could observe a solar or light column. This is an optical effect, a vertical strip of light that stretches upward from the sun during sunset
or sunrise, well, and our sunset smoothly passes into sunrise and in general everything around is very leisurely (Day 3d).
The extract given as an example starts as a light sketch, which introduces 'sea' as the main presenteme of the thematic block 'the nature of the Arctic'. A quick switch of the register into a popular science register directs the discourse along the trajectory of information transmission. Suchlike passages, introducing scientific terms into the metatexts patches, give the text a specific uneven rhythm, which in its turn symbolizes instability, fragility, rocking. Sea naming (nomination) is carried out through the geographic names, similes, or a basic name 'sea'. The semiotic role of a marine space in the AFU diary's entries is significant. The presenteme of a cold, northern sea as an integral part of the Arctic space is opposed to the warm sea (Red or Mediterranean). It gives impetus to the further development of the axiologically-symbolic potential of the situations built around the lexico-semantic class of this object's nominations. The cold sea in the Arctic may be deceptively calm and remind one of some warm southern sea, yet the northern sea requires that explorers remain persistent and staunch. The descriptions of the sea states convey the psychological atmosphere, the level of performance, and the team's morale. The presenteme 'sea' may not be even introduced by direct nomination but be presented by means either of the author's or other AFU team member's emotional state description. Reoccurrence of the presenteme 'sea' results in the personification of this object. Axiological meaning of the content-conceptual layer of the diary's entries with the presenteme 'sea' is the necessity to overcome obstacles while being at sea, bravely endure rocking, inconveniences and discomfort of everyday life. At the same time, the conceptual dominants of the presenteme 'sea' emphasize the beauty and limitless source of aesthetic pleasure. Different states of the sea and sky are semiotized. Overall, in the AFU diary's entries 25 textual extracts have been found devoted to semiotic reflection of the sea and sky. According to the quantitative analysis, the exact number of the word 'sea' appearance is 65. Here we will give several examples.
1. It is calm, sunny, warm, and not rocking. The sea sparkles and draws patterns with seaweed (Day 3d).
2. The feelings were terrible, considering that I felt seasick. I had not even had a minimal adaptation to the sea yet, to the ship, and here I was working at once. Luckily, everything passed, everything is interesting! (Day 4th).
3. The Barents Sea is rocking us very gently so far... (Day 5th).
4. Outside, the calm sea glanced affectionately at me, and the sky winked glumly, agreeing that getting up this early was a mockery of the body (Day 6th).
The presenteme 'sea' accumulates a very powerful symbolic potential, the object itself gains mythological character. The extracts, depicting sea, are open for interpretation. Yet, the meanings, which are generated, are always connected with promoting the values of the endless sea space. Scientific exploration of the Arctic seas, marine inhabitants is enveloped by romantic flair, and requires strong character. This fact makes the profession of the polar researcher very important and prestigious. Enchanting impact on the addressee of the diary with a view to forming value-based guidelines is reached with the help of the admirative and emotiogenic strategies. Tonality 'as a modus category together with evaluation, comprises emotionally-expressive field' (Matveeva, 1990: 18) and acts as the tactic implementing the main strategies. The range of tonality in the diary's entries with the key presenteme 'sea' is extremely versatile - from light lyrical tonality to disturbing uncertainty and suspense. The admirative strategy is presented by mostly expressive, elevated tonality. The emotiogenic strategy is implemented by means of unexpected choice of the discourse tonality. For example, playful, joking tonality: Greetings from the stormy Barents Sea. As some participants say, it finally looks like itself, not cosplaying the Mediterranean. It worked well, it can be repeated (Day 19th).
The authors (the subject of the discourse) make extensive use of emotionalization while conveying the meaning by means of different creative tools - language game, theatralization of syntagmatic presentemes, puns. It is important to note that playful reinterpretation of reality is the leading model of construing the world of the expedition on the AFU diary's pages. For this reason, the situations, conveying a powerful value-based meaning protrude more saliently. These are the so-called axiogenic (generating axiological meanings) situations. The symbolic sign 'sea' is the immediate context for most situations of such kind. Expectedly, they support the value-based dominant of overcoming difficulties for the sake of science and social good, glorifying heroic deeds of courageous polar explorers of the past. These extracts represent historic references, containing
factual information in a very restrained and low-key tonality. The point is that the addressee is to infer the idea of heroic efforts made by the polar explorers of the past. Didactic tonality does not turn to instructive and imposing. Intertextual inclusions of tales, stories, and legends create a cultural-historical context, expanding the semiotic space of the AFU diary's text. The chronotope of the narrative goes beyond the borders of the present, giving a deeper axiological meaning to the geographical space of the expedition.
Axiogenic situations built around the symbolic dominant presenteme 'sea' generate the main axiological meanings of the AFU diary - it is an integral part of the ecosystem, it is a world in itself, which is to be explored, protected and embraced.
The next significant presentemes are 'explorer' and 'scientist'. There are 21 situations with the presenteme 'explorer' and 14 situations with the presenteme 'scientist'. Neutral by their meaning lexical units acquire a powerful meaningful charge in AFU diary's entries. Multidimensiality of what is happening in reality of the expedition finds reflection in the equally multidimensional concept of the 'scientist-explorer of the Arctic'. Semiotic understanding of the concept fixes axiological features as the discourse unfolds. The unfolding narrative opens the row of usual young people, not all of them are scientists, but each of them is doing research. It is important to note that youth as the dominant feature is especially emphasized in the media discourse of the university being consistent with the meta intention of the discourse subject -involving young people into science.
The strategy of attraction is based on such features of discourse as being spectacular and dramaturgic. Focusing on dramaturgic means of the discourse, it is relevant to refer to the notion of dramaturgical action in the theory of communication by Jürgen Habermas (Habermas, 1984). Actor (the university as the subject of the discourse in our case) presents himself or herself through the evaluation of the situation: "evaluative expressions or standards of value have justificatory force when they characterize a need in such a way that addresses can, in the framework of a common cultural heritage, recognize in these interpretations their own needs. This explains why attributes of style, aesthetic expressions, formal qualities in general, have such great weight in dramaturgic action" (Habermas, 1984: 150).
Playful reinterpretation of real actions and events is the key feature of the AFU diary and this playful transformation of the real world happens with the help of means whereby the image construing of the main addressee (students, applicants) occurs. The concept of a socially approved personality of a young scientist, explorer is formed in the addressee's conceptual system. Among the tactics of the strategy of attraction the language game is the most salient - inclusions of paremiological units, numerous puns, allusions to memes, products of mass culture (cartoons, songs of popular performers, TV programs). The strategy of attraction finds its realization through intertextual presentemes as well. Patchy, clip-like texts of the AFU diary are isomorphic to the clip thinking of the addressee and are determined by the eclecticism of registers. Therefore, sketches in a popular science register give way to metadiscourse passages reflecting the author's trail of thoughts, which are in their turn followed by lyrical description of the sea or sky state. The switch of tonality happens drastically - from serious to joking by allusion to some meme or the comic description of how young explorers cope with the rocking. Playful, joking tonality, which in general is characteristic of the discourse of the young, prevails. Playful tonality emphasizes rejection of moralizing, mocking pathetic exhortations. Here is an example. The AFU diary starts with the entry on the solemn ceremony of the AFU leaving for the first expedition in 2023. The text contains factual information, solemn elevated tonality is supported by the nomination chain: "unique project", "young researchers", "northern seas", "the development vector", "a real scientist", "a young scientist", "unique ecosystem", "team work", "sustainable development of the Arctic", "to overcome marine space". The very first entry of the AFU diary introduces the dominant axiological meanings, which will be promoted by means of the diary. It is obvious that the first opening text of the diary complies with the strict requirements of the official corporative text, promoting key ideologemes, which reflect the values of the university in close connection with the national agenda. The more contrasting against the backdrop of the solemn official text looks the next entry: The solemn ceremony of the expedition's departure with words of farewell from representatives of the regional government, NArFU, Sevgidromet, songs about the Arctic and dancing polar bears took place until noon. Its culmination was the handing over of the expedition flag to its scientific leader Anna Trofimova. Anna Nikolaevna got so emotional that hardly killed those cheerful bears from the excess of feelings (Day 1st).
Playful reinterpretation of real events marks accentuated evaluation and is the dominant model of the communicative behavior of the AFU diary's authors. New semiotics of the situation is created by optimistic tonality and carnivalization of what is happening around - the genuine interest in science is generated not by slogans and official speeches but by personal aspirations, though the genre, the situation, and the context may dictate the necessity to follow the protocol. Thus, we observe how the addressee is being formed - switching of tonality, register change serve as the sign for those who understand, for 'ours'. For example, that was a pause of whining, back to science (Day 5th).
By using playful, humoristic tonality as the main discursive tactic of the strategy of attraction, the meaning-generating function of communicative situations, construed by such tonality, grows. Here are a few examples of such situations' analysis by means of the semiotic model of jokes by V.I. Karasik. Within the framework of this model there are semantic, pragmatic and syntactic classes of comic texts. Semantic class presupposes incompatibility of the object and reality (nonsense). Thus, the seal becomes the frequent image in the diary, but not in the meaning of the real member of the mammal family. Lexicographic analysis helps conclude that in colloquial register of the Russian language this word is strongly associated with metaphorical understanding "clumsy, slow-moving person, lazy and sluggish". In the thesaurus by S.A. Kuznetsov, we read: 2. Colloquial. "About a clumsy, awkward, slow person" (Kuzneczov, 2000: 1357). The Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian language by V.I. Dal" gives the definition: "slow-moving lazy person" (Dal, 1882: 412). The Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language by S.I. Ozhegov and N.Yu. Shvedova provides the definition: "about an awkward person" (Ozhegov, Shvedova, 1999: 2055). Despite the negative connotations in the situations described in the diary a very positive meaning emerges - a cute, kind, a little bit clumsy, very familiar and dear, typically Arctic animal. Here are examples, illustrating the reaction of the expedition members to a sudden meeting with the animal: At first it was a gray spot that could hardly be called animate, but we got closer and the spot moved. We couldn't have been more delighted. It was such a pity that the seal did not understand our intention and hurried to plunge into the water. And you know what I noticed - even the toughest men in our expedition melted like ice cream in the sun when they saw a seal. So, ladies, the way to men's hearts is through cute Arctic creatures! (Day 12th).
The 'seal', this is how the author calls herself greeting the readers at the beginning of numerous entries before going on to describe the events of the day. Naturally, symbolic self-irony appeals to readers, and as every joke it shortens the communicative distance. Here are the examples:
1. The chief seal of the Arctic Floating University is keeping the diary! (Day 5th).
2. Hello! This is me again! The most dexterous seal of the expedition team! (Day 6th).
3. And still it's me with you, the seal, though yesterday I felt at times like a deer, and sometimes like an arctic fox, or like an elephant-like lemming, when I tried to get through the willow thickets (Day 9th).
4. Today I am a very sad seal (Day 11th).
The semantic type of a joke is not the main type. The pragmatic one is more characteristic of the diary's texts. The pragmatic type means irrelevance of the subject's behavior to the situation. Indeed, it is the double planning of the situations that attaches absurd-comic flair to what is happening and serves as the main means of humoristic tonality realization. Quite often the authors compare the expedition in the high north to a cruise in warm seas. It is both a means to make the text more spectacular and a humoristic device. Long discourse extracts presenting narrative reconstruction of the complex referential situations, for example, descriptions of disembarkations belong to the pragmatic type. The pragmatic jokes make these extracts more dynamic and cinematic. Another category of humoristic discourse extracts from the AFU diary built on the pragmatic model is axiogenic personal narratives. The addresser (the author herself) introduces associatively attracted information. It contains cultural references, personal memories, the details from previous expeditions - the appeal to the background of the past always attaches the mythological features to the events in current context. Mainly, these are humoristic personal stories built on the contrast of the extreme and routine situations.
The syntactic types of jokes are based on the incompatibility of genre and style arrangement of speech with real circumstances - playful change of the code, imitation of other people's speech, register downgrading. The syntactic type is the main type of jokes in the AFU diary. The means of this type realization constitute the dominant tonality of the text - playful, humoristic tonality.
Assuming that the informative function of the text remains the leading one as the AFU diary is to educate and enlighten its readers, inclusions of factual, scientific information make up the indisputable block in every day's entry. Yet, to keep the reader, to engage him or her in the rethinking of the Arctic within the scientific paradigm, the author has to resort to the syntactic type of constructing entertaining, spectacular narration. So, seriousness and difficulty of factual information are mitigated by register downgrading. Descriptions of physical phenomena, peculiarities of flora and fauna of the Arctic are saturated with the elements of youth slang; diminutives; colloquial expressions; unusual word formations; phonetic imagery (assonance, alliteration); emotionally-evaluative lexis, comprising personal reflections of the author (the metatext). Here are some examples:
1.1 have just learned that tornadoes and whirlwinds never happen on the territory of the Russian Federation. Nor do we have hurricanes in Russia, only strong winds. If the wind comes from the ground then it doesn't count! (Day 3d).
2. A gannet lives along the Gulf Stream, and in the Russian Arctic it appeared at the end of the XXth century. It is a distinct symptom of the "Atlantification" of the Arctic (Day 5th).
3. We dropped anchor near Kolgyev island. This island is a real enchanting place! (Day 6th). (Kolgyev sounds very similar to Russian word meaning to enchant, to practice witchcraft).
4. The rocking scared us heftily, so only four of us signed in for the concert (Day 9th).
5. I had an easy-peasy landing today, because I picked mosses and lichens. It was a terrific walk! (Day 14th).
According to the presentation theory of discourse by A.V. Olyanich (Olyanich, 2004), in the text the incompatibility of the genre and style arrangement of the speech with the real situations is carried out with syntagmatic presentemes: Novaya Zemlya (New Land) ...New? No, I've just washed it with "Laska" (reference to the well-known commercial). Oh, forgive me, they forgot to take away the keys to the punmaking room! (Day 14th)
Syntagmatic presentemes and accentuated tonality (humoristic, playful, elevated) allow the author to stage the situations and engage the addressee into the constructed reality. The addressee receives a chance to experience another reality, which is hidden from him or her in a real life. The AFU diary generates a feeling of belonging to the described events.
4. Results
While scrutinizing the Arctic Floating University diary, we decided to carry out a short quantitative analysis to find out the frequency of some words and images or concepts. Firstly, we focused on colors. The Arctic is generally associated with the white color as the region is presumed to be covered with ice and snow. We highlighted a wide range of colors mentioned by the narrators while describing the surrounding world in the Arctic. Not surprisingly, the most frequently used adjective was white (Figure 1). Mostly, the white color was mentioned when the authors reported about polar bears (they are called white bears in Russian). For example, "Polar bears do not avoid this island, and theoretically any snowdrift can suddenly get up and greet you" (Day 9th). A rather rare atmospheric phenomenon "a white rainbow" is also present in the narration. For instance, "The bright sun was shining through the fog — these are excellent conditions for creating a white rainbow" (Day 5th). We didn't take into account hydronyms incorporating the white color such as the White Sea or the White Cape.
The second frequently used color in the text was black for depicting birds (albatross, loon, and sandpiper are named in the text), butterfly and fish: "And since 2017, all ornithologists and zoologists who went on AFU cruise have had a dream to find another black-browed albatross and prove that it migrates from the Atlantic to the Arctic" (Day 20th) or "Have you ever thought why auks or penguins are black and white? Here's the answer: when it is in the water, it will be difficult for its prey to see a white belly and escape in time, and it is more difficult for predators from above to find a black back in a dark sea" (Day 20th).
Figure 1 shows the number and frequency of colors mentioned in the diary and one sentence could list hues of several colors: "The sea in the Ice Harbour was fantastically beautiful: deep blue, slightly greenish closer to the shore, turquoise ice floes were mirroring in it, merging in the reflection with the clouds" (Day 17th). Thus, we conclude that although the white color is predominant in the Arctic landscape it does not exclude other colors depicting natural phenomena or personal perception.
Fig. 1. The color palette of the AFU cruise
As it was mentioned above the main role of any travelogue or travel notes is ascribed to the impressions from what the traveler observes and notices, that is why we analysed recurrent epithets chosen by the authors of the AFU diary to reflect their emotions throughout the cruise (Figure 2). The most frequent adjective utilized by the narrators was "interesting", which emphasizes the intention of the addresser to involve the reader into the reconstruction of the expedition's reality. We view this as the realization of the admirative strategy: "Although we are already in the Barents Sea, I will tell you about very interesting and extremely rare weather phenomena that we saw during one day in the White Sea" (Day 5th) or "It was interesting to see the wreckage of a collapsed civilization, look at the destroyed buildings and reflect on how unpredictable human fate is after all!" (Day 8th). The authors were delighted with landscapes, views, ice, glaciers, icebergs, ships, stones, people, interior, etc. "We waved in the direction of the beautiful yacht "Eldorado", which came to Arkhangelsk at night" (Day 1st), "It is incredibly delicious and it is impossible to refuse what you are offered, and it is always beautifully served, just like in a real restaurant" (Day 2nd). But mostly "beautiful" was used to describe nature: "Wow, what a beautiful sky!" (Day 5th), "And it seems that we have stumbled upon such a unique place where conditions contribute to the appearance of such beautiful meteorological phenomena" (Day 5th), "When there was even more ice, we ran out to take pictures of how beautifully it floated past us, or rather, we passed by it" (Day 12th), and "We are messing around with our problems there, and the glacier is so massive and beautiful" (Day 14th). Although we encounter a sorrowful adjective "sad", it is not connected with the surroundings but with the inner perception of the fact of celebrating a birthday away from home "I thought that a birthday away from home and loved ones can be sad, so I began to torture Danya to see if he was sad" (Day 14th). But this epithet is used only twice throughout the diary. So, the analysis proves that the perception of the viewers was rather admiring and enthusiastic.
Fig. 2. Adjectives used by the diary's authors to express their emotions
It was also interesting to realise that weather, atmospheric, physical, meteorological or other nature phenomena persistently attracted the narrators' attention. Figure 3 demonstrates that ice and sun are almost equally present in the authors' perception: "The sun was already touching the horizon [...]" (Day 5th), "I look at my bright pink face and I cannot figure out whether I was so wonderfully tanned in the polar sun, or whether there was an overabundance of sea air and
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complete delight of vessels" (Day 15th), "I asked, since the ice is getting smaller, if the bear can continue its evolution and move to a completely aquatic existence" (Day 11th), or "In general, the walk combined with the photo session with ice was extended for those who were properly dressed" (Day 12th).
Another fact, which is worth noticing, concerns clouds and thunderclouds (Figure 3). The analysis shows that the cruise was occasionally accompanied by a variety of clouds (plumeous clouds, cumulus clouds, rolling clouds) but only once we encounter a thundercloud ("I didn't know that tornadoes and whirlwind always start from the sky: from a thundercloud or a cloud" (Day 3rd). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com) defines the cloud as a visible mass of particles of condensed vapor (such as water or ice) suspended in the atmosphere of a planet (such as the earth) or moon and the thundercloud as a large dark cloud that produces thunder and lightning during a storm. We dare conclude that the could in the narrators' perception is associated with something more serene and peaceful in comparison with the thundercloud. Thus, although the cruise was rather challenging, it was quite harmonious in the perception of the environment.
Fig. 3. Nature phenomena mentioned throughout the diary
We complete the quantitative analysis with the presenteme "sea" that is used to describe mood, performance, and atmosphere in the AFU team. Throughout the diary this presenteme is recurred to 65 times in comparison with 5 times when "sky" was mentioned. Figure 4 shows the ration of these two presenteme as well as correlation of rather similar presentemes "air" and "water". We could conclude that the narrators got accustomed to the land as their natural environment that is why the sea constantly attracts their attention in contrast to their habitual setting: "The transition between the sea and the sky is blurred, filled with haze or fog, and there is no border" (Day 13th), "This suggests that the sea throws us out, spits everything back out" (Day 14th), "It was quiet in the bay, and the Barents Sea there, beyond its border, continued to breathe, gaining strength to arrange further ride-ups on us" (Day 17th).
■ sky "sea ■ air ■ water
Fig. 4. The ratio of the words sky/sea and air/water in the AFU diary
Meanwhile in their everyday life they observe the sky daily and it does not present any particular interest, although they notice its beauty: "The calm sea looked out kindly, the sky winked gloomily, agreeing that getting up so early is a real mockery" (Day 6th), "Fou really need fresh air and not look at wobbly objects" (Day 10th).
After scrutinizing the media text of the Arctic Floating University diary, we elaborated and carried out the questionnaire for two groups of bachelor students majoring in "International Affairs in the Arctic" and "The Arctic Region of Russia". The aim was to find out how students whose education is tightly connected with the Arctic perceive the image of the Arctic conveyed by those who visited the Arctic in reality.
The first question was if students read the AFU diary on their own and if yes, what the motive for their reading was. The result shows that 30 % of respondents had not read the diary before they were asked about it. 70 % read the dairy regularly but their motives were quite different. Some of them were interested to learn how contemporary Artic expeditions differ from those of the past. Others were attracted by impressions, events, details described by the participants of the expedition. One student answered that his friend took part in the expedition, so reading the diary he followed his friend and got some information about the travel as the internet was not available all the time and friends could not communicate easily. Some respondents highlighted the interest to the routine life of a scientist in the Arctic and endeavor to see Arctic landscapes. One more answer stood apart - the respondent wanted to see the Arctic from a different angle.
The students were asked if they felt involved and engaged while reading the diary. Most of the students (85 %) replied that they did and they shared their feeling: when you read, pictures appear in your head; the descriptions are so vivid that you unconsciously become a participant of the expedition; stories and comments by the participants of the expedition make their image familiar and understandable; I am keen on the North and expeditions. Suchlike answers definitely demonstrate that the main communicative strategies - the emotiogenic and admirative strategies, and the strategy of attraction - exploited by the author, turned out quite effective. One response gave a detailed explanation: you feel this involvement because the text contains three indispensable elements: narration, direct speech, and illustrations. One more student specified that although you feel involvement you understand how the Artic is unfamiliar and distant from us. Three students who did not feel involvement explained it by the presence of some terms that they did not understand, realising that the Arctic is unreachable for common people, and the text itself seemed to be graphomania.
The third question was about associations that respondents got while reading the diary. It is noteworthy that the students who had not read the diary before were asked to read it and they did it. After analysing the questionnaire's findings, we found out that some answers of those students who were asked to read the diary had a bit negative hue. As for the associations listed by the respondents they vary from traveling, adventures, risk to freedom, eternity, emptiness, danger, incredible beauty, craggy sea shore, sea-gulls, ice floe, and to Russian soul; lands unknown to people, and letters to the relatives on the mainland. Answering this question, the respondents highlighted that science can be cheerful and amusing in the context of interaction with others; research expeditions can be not only serious and challenging but interesting and useful for reaching like-minded people; the Arctic is an area that is worth preserving and studying, and people who do that make this area really warm. Three students added that while reading they had associations with some literary works describing nature and feelings connected with it; a contemporary trend of writing a travel-blog, and even unsuccessful imitation of the hunter's notes. One student noted that he did not have any association while reading although he gave rather detailed answers to other questions. Thus, the tactics, employed by the author - tonality switches with dominant humoristic tonality, playful reinterpretation of the events, language game, theatralization of syntagmatic presentemes, puns - all come as fruitful tactics of forming positively charged associations with the Arctic.
The next question was formulated as "What attracted your attention while reading?". We did not limit answers of our respondents and did not give any direction. The responses fall in three groups. One group emphasised the narrative style focusing on the artistic style of the narrative; dialogues; unusual and entertaining style of writing, and an artistic narrative highlighting vivid and memorable moments. Another group concentrated on authors' engagement in the process or writing: frankness and sincerity of the authors, their openness; the sincere desire of the authors to convey the highlights of the journey and attract the audience not in dry scientific language, but by adapting to the reader, explaining to him/her that the people who took part in the expedition are the same as the reader. The last group was attracted by facts about the inhabitants of the Arctic territories and the natural features of the region, about the monitoring of marine waste; historical information, for example, about dogs for F. Nansen's expedition; detailed
meteorological, biological information and historical background, and description of various animals; detailed descriptions. However, one respondent was irritated by designation of all the regalia of the professors and scientists.
In the fifth question, we asked the respondents to define the style of the narration - popular science text or a fictional text. The results show (Figure 5) that most of the students (11 out of 20) conceived the diary as a fictional text though the diary is abundant in professional terminology and descriptions of physical, meteorological and other phenomena. This is definitely a sign that the media genre of the expedition diary is effective in facilitating students' perception of a complicated scientific narration.
■ popular science ■ fictiontional text
Fig. 5. The narrative style of the AFU diary perceived by the respondents
We also requested the students to define what images appeared most often in the diary texts. The students were supposed to evaluate their impressions rather than to calculate those images. The results break down in four clusters. The least numerous is where the respondents did not notice any repetitive images. The next two groups are almost equal in the number. One of them contains the images of nature: images of nature and weather; Arctic conditions; images of frozen land; image of the sea, ocean, cold and emptiness, and images of animals, ice, and water. Another group incorporates images of the team: images of hardworking, harsh freight forwarders, images of assistant girls; images of teamwork; images of enthusiastic, brave, cheerful and active guys. In addition, the final group focuses attention on scientific research and exploration: the complexity of the expedition; Arctic research; images of scientific devices; images of the discoverers; images of the expanses of the Arctic and its researchers; the uniqueness of the route.
Assuming that the quantitative analysis demonstrated that the prevailing color in the AFU diary was white followed by black, the color perception of the students gained our interest (Figure 6). The most noticed color among the respondents was white which coincides with the outcomes of the diary analysis. However, two moments should be mentioned. The first is that the readers of the diary did not notice black at all or they did not pay attention to it. The second is that dark blue and light blue ranking low in the analysis took leading places in readers' perception. We dare suppose that it could be explained by numerous mentions of the sea and the sky in the diary. Although the color was not designated, students completed their impressions with colors associated with the sea and the sky.
As for the sea, its perception by the students falls down into several images with gradation. The first image is a calm, smooth, and endless sea. Then the sea transforms into calm but uncertain concealing some kind of mysticism or calm and deceptive waters, ready to change at any moment. Other students perceive the sea as rough and at the same time lulling, vast and keeping secrets at the bottom; unstable, changeable and fickle, and choppy sea in the AFU diary. For most respondents the sea seems to be powerful, great, wayward; atmospheric, demanding serious attitude element; something great, exciting, distant, vast but incredibly beautiful. There are some poetic images of the sea: the Arctic seas are cold and harsh but if there are like-minded people and a specific task, then the sea can become a pleasant place and not so cruel; and something that should be respected and over what we have no control. To be objective, we should mention that only one person remained indifferent to the description of the sea in the diary and answered that he did not notice any particular image of the sea.
Fig. 6. The color palette of the AFU cruise perceived by the respondents
During the analysis of the AFU diary, we paid attention to weather, atmospheric, physical, meteorological or other nature phenomena and found out that the most frequently mentioned phenomena were ice, the sun, and clouds. In the respondents' answers ice and the sun were mentioned a couple of times but clouds were not cited at all. The students highlighted rolling that was quite common, calm sea and stormy sea, and strong wind (Figure 7). One student wrote about a rainbow but none of them mentioned sunrise or sunset, thunderclouds or fog.
Fig. 7. Nature phenomena perceived by the respondents
We stated in the first part of the research that the tonality of the diary can be characterised as optimistic, playful, and humorous. The majority of the respondents defined the tonality as active and positive; optimistic and enthusiastic; friendly and amiable. Some students noticed that the tonality changed depending on weather, landscapes around, and feelings of the narrator. Yet again, one student considered the tonality as tedious.
The final question was about the diary authors' address to the readers. We would define this address as informal, casual, and friendly. The respondents also characterised it as polite and friendly, amiable and kind. The students thought that the authors treated them as relatives who stayed far away, or as good acquaintances or even friends. Some of the respondents specified that: the authors want to attract the audience and popularize the Arctic Floating University; incite readers to travel more; share their emotions and impressions. Two students felt that the audience was neglected by the authors.
Summing up, we can conclude that almost all the aims, modalities and impacts intended by the authors reached the audience though there is a small number of the respondents, namely, two of them, who were reluctant to discuss the diary and perceived it in quite a negative way.
5. Conclusion
The subject of the analysis in the article is the Arctic Floating University diary, which is a journalistic genre incorporated into the media discourse of the university site. The authors explored the diary's texts from the angle of semiotic reflection of the scientific expedition's reality and promotion of the meaningful for the discourse subject values.
1. The media text of the analyzed genre being the product of the genre transformation possesses a significant impact potential on the addressee.
2. The impact and realization of the addresser's intentions - to inform, to form value-charged meanings, to motivate - are implemented by the communicative strategy of attraction, admirative strategy, and emotiogenic communicative strategy. The reader of the AFU diary becomes a witness and a co-participant. The tripartite goal (to inform, to influence, and to entertain) is achieved.
3. The main tactic is the choice of the discourse tonality. The general optimistic tonality, playful reflection of the reality structure and construct the addressee. The targeted addressee is a student, an applicant, a young researcher. The major part of the text is created in a humoristic tonality. According to the semiotic model of jokes, the prevailing types of jokes are syntactic and pragmatic.
4. The meaningful indicators of value-charged dominants are lexico-semantic presentemes. Syntagmatic and intertextual presentemes are also employed to realize main strategies of the diary's texts. The key value-charged dominants promoted by the AFU diary are - 'We ought to preserve and explore the Arctic', 'doing science is prestigious and interesting', 'a researcher is a socially very much in demand occupation', 'the Arctic is our homeland'; 'we are to study the history and culture of our homeland'.
5. The analysis of the students' perception of the AFU's diary allows us to conclude that the media genre of the expedition diary is an effective vehicle of promoting key values of the University. The dominants of the axiological sphere of the NArFU's discourse (Arctic exploration and protection and students' involvement into the Arctic research) find immediate response in the readers. The genre of the expedition diary has profound functional potential and harmoniously fits in the University discourse as the media texts created in this genre help implement the addresser's intentions to a high extent.
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