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Shalifova O.N., Klyushina A.M., Volova V.M. [Semiotic approach to the interpretation of the covers of the British political and economic weekly «The Economist»] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2022, Vol. 13, No. 3. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/28FLSK322.pdf (in Russian).

Semiotic approach to the interpretation of the covers of the British political and economic weekly «The Economist»

Shalifova Olga Nikolaevna
Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education, Samara, Russia
E-mail: shalifova@pgsga.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0691-6023
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=477026
SCOPUS: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=57217734064

Klyushina Alena Mikhailovna
Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education, Samara, Russia
E-mail: klyushina@pgsga.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2465-348X
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=679899
SCOPUS: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=57217735093

Volova Viktoria Mikhailovna
Samara State Technical University, Samara, Russia
E-mail: vmvolova@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9044-2050
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=826471
SCOPUS: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=57742883200

Abstract. The article is devoted to the interpretation of the peculiarities of “The Economist” magazine covers of the issues published since 1997 — by 2020 on an open source website https://www.economist.com/printedition/covers.

The cover of the British political and economic weekly “The Economist” studied in this paper is considered as a semiotically complicated text, which consists of two inhomogeneous parts (verbal and non-verbal). The interaction of these elements that are different in their semiotic nature forms the general meaning of the whole work and the purpose of its utterance.

The purpose of this article is to identify and describe the specifics of the semiotic system of the cover image of “The Economist” magazine, as it is the cover of any publication that acts as the first element that the reader gets acquainted with.

The authors carried out a detailed review of the modern linguistic literature to identify the key concepts of the research; enumerate the characteristic features of the analyzed British economic and political weekly “The Economist”; describe the structural elements of the cover; investigating the design of the verbal component and its graphic functions; and examine linguistic features of the verbal components of the cover image of “The Economist” international weekly; in addition, they describe the importance of correctly decoding visual components and justify the need for background knowledge.

The analysis of the visual functions of the verbal means of information expression gives grounds to conclude that there are six types of the cover image that contribute to the understanding of the publicists’ idea and maximum visual implementation.

Studying the language features of the cover image, the authors of the article investigate the structural, semantic, stylistic and functional features of the verbal component. It has been found that the title can sometimes be accompanied by a subtitle. It is revealed that the title of “The Economist” can be represented by a whole sentence, a phrase or a separate word. In each case, the choice of one or another structural option helps cover designers to implement a particular idea.

At the semantic level, the magazine cover image is characterized by a certain ambiguity, which motivates the reader to read the entire text. Analyzing the stylistic features of the verbal part of “The Economist” cover, the authors reveal the use of diology, antithesis, allusion, alliteration, hyperbole, metaphor, truncation and parcelling. All these features of the verbal part of the cover image attract the readers’ attention in the same way as the visual part. The authors emphasize that the verbal component is more easily perceived by the recipient than the visual one. That is why, according to the authors of the article, the visual component of the cover should be easily decoded, and some background knowledge is absolutely necessary for it.

Finally, the authors draw conclusions about the semiotic nature of the covers of “The Economist” international magazine.

Keywords: semiotic approach; cover image; “The Economist”; verbal component; non-verbal (iconic) component; background knowledge; creolized text

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