1. Introduction

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. People usually address the famous quote by M. Mull when they speak about the nature of music journalism. It is always problematic for any music journalist to simply speak about music. It is hard to express, reflect or explain music which naturally defies the characterization within the means of verbal language. Music develops its own semiotic system and opposes language with its own complex of signs. Thus, music discourse deals with the conflict of two sign systems, which makes speaking about music difficult per se.

The grand purpose of our research consists in understanding of the ways language meets this challenge. This grand question is narrowed in the title of our research by certain delimitation factors. First of all, we focus exclusively on the music discourse within the context of music journalism, therefore we consider music discourse a type of professional discourse, namely journalism discourse, that belongs to music journalists and defines their work. Secondly, we focus on modern Russian music journalism since we could not cover a broader spectrum of languages and epochs in the current project. Thirdly, for the same reason we focus only on the written form of music discourse.

The relevance of our research is linked to, firstly, the peculiarity of music discourse. As far as music discourse is an unusual type of discourse it attracts the attention of linguists. The exploration of the unusual aspects of language is one of the most important tasks of modern linguistics since it could provide scientists with the more cohesive and accomplished understanding of the functions of language. Secondly, the relevance of our project is defined by the versatility of Russian journalism and its language. Nowadays, when the influence of the peripheral spheres of journalism on the central ones is much more noticeable, the question of the specifics of music journalism seems actually substantial. Thirdly, the relevance of our research is connected with the specific state of modern Russian music journalism. The global shifts in journalism as well as in the music industry became the reasons for the extinction of the professional music press and rapid growth of local music blogs. Music journalism in Russia undergoes a difficult transitional period, and that is the reason why it is remarkably important to find out its recent trends and perspectives.

The level of prior studies of the problem could be represented by three groups of sources.

First of all, we address a few research papers which are dedicated immediately to the subject of music discourse. Our most important reference in Russian linguistics is the articles written by E. Aleshinskaya, devoted to the lexical, genre and communicative specifics of music discourse (2007, 2014, 2015). At the same time, the interpretations of the “music discourse” as a term differ in English-speaking publications. The foreign researches that could be classified as music discourse studies are rarely marked as such and, consequently, do not create a cohesive picture of the subject. Therefore, we have to refer to particular examples of focused music discourse studies such as M. Pavlovovб's article on the genre of concert note (2013) and the group of papers dedicated to the language of hip-hop culture (2009). Finally, we address the classic J. Blacking article on the structure of music discourse (1982). The solid scientific fundament of our research is also provided by the detailed monograph “Music and Discourse” written by J. Nattiez (1990) and M. Leonard's project (2017), accomplished within the context of critical discourse analysis and dedicated to the dominant discourses in the music industry.

The second group of sources is represented by the literature that belongs to the field of professional discourse studies. It includes the classic book written by K. Kong (2019) as well as the anthology edited by K. Candlin (2002) and the articles by M. Solly (2016) and S. B. Irimiea (2017) which elaborate upon the questions of the stylistics of professional discourse and its social functions correspondingly.

The third group of sources consists of the papers dedicated to the media discourse analysis which is the most developed sphere of discourse analysis nowadays. Here we address the anthology edited by T. van Dijk (2011) and the monographs by D. Machin and T. van Leeuwen (2007), A. O'Keeffe (2006), M. Talbot (2013) and M. Bednarek (2008).

The object of the research is the music discourse of modern Russian-speaking specialized media. The subject of the research is the language and communicative specifics of this discourse.

The goal of the project is to define the specifics of music discourse in modern music journalism in Russia.

The research has to accomplish the following tasks:

1. To study and classify the linguistic specifics of modern Russian music discourse in specialized media and common communication models these media utilize that have been already described in academic literature;

2. To find out the extralinguistic factors that influence and shape professional music communication and modern music discourse by examining the communicative situation of the discourse;

3. To define the stylistic specifics of modern music discourse in Russian specialized media;

4. To summarize the most common features of music discourse and to evaluate their functions within the given discourse.

The corresponding problem statements of our project are:

1. There are certain extralinguistic factors that shape the modern professional music discourse in Russia. These factors reflect the state of the Russian music industry and music journalism nowadays.

2. The professional music discourse in Russian specialized media is characterized by the specific stylistics determined by the stylistic patterns of the informal register.

3. The specific linguistic features of modern professional music discourse in Russian specialized media fulfill certain functions connected with the background communicative situation of the discourse.

The research uses the group of linguistic methods within the methodological framework of discourse analysis. Primary methods are lexical analysis and stylistic analysis while content analysis is also applied in the project as a data ordering tool.

The paper addresses the typology of music media developed by I. Karpenko and T. Maksimova (2017) that classify modern media into 4 groups:

1. General music media;

2. Style-oriented music media;

3. Hobby and professional media;

4. Academic media.

The research base of the paper is shaped in accordance with the given classification and contains 80 texts divided into 4 corresponding groups. Each group is represented by 2 media with different stylistic or thematic focuses. Each media is represented by 10 texts written by various authors. The media we have chosen for our research are the most popular representatives of corresponding types of music media or niches of Russian music journalism:

1. General music media:

Афиша.Музыка (Afisha.Music);

Zvuki.ru.

Style-oriented music media:

The Flow (hip hop music oriented online magazine);

InRock (rock music oriented online magazine).

Hobby and professional media:

Guitarz Magazine (magazine for guitarists);

Music Box (magazine for musicians and producers).

Academic media:

Музыкальная жизнь (Muzykalnaya Zhizn');

Classical Music News.

The research process is divided into four stages.

Stage I. The first stage presupposes the analysis of the background communicative situation of the modern music discourse. The specifics of the communicative frame are figured out considering the extralinguistic factors that shape it in the first place.

Stage II. The next step of the study consists in the linguistic analysis of the research base in accordance with the hypotheses of the research and the evaluation of the specific linguistic features found in the texts.

Stage III. The found examples are marked, calculated and classified into groups according to corresponding levels of language.

Stage IV. These groups are analyzed within the framework of discourse analysis. Their functions are evaluated in detail within the context of the communicative situation of modern music discourse in Russian specialized media.

Theoretical significance of the research lies in its contribution to the field of discourse analysis lies in its detailed review of means of language that determine the understanding of music nowadays. The project elaborates upon the theory of professional discourse and media discourse analysis and applies it to the new empirical material.

Practical significance of the project could be viewed in three different perspectives. First of all, the results of the research could be applied in the fields of marketing and PR since corresponding experts have to address a music customer within certain patterns of music discourse and clearly understand the role of common linguistic instruments and use them as effectively as possible. Moreover, the paper could be helpful for the specialists in the areas of music or lifestyle journalism in terms of professional reflection and deeper understanding of linguistic mechanisms of music discourse. The project could also be used for teaching purposes within academia as an example of the possible approach to media studies in terms of discourse analysis. Finally, the regular reader interested in music journalism may address the paper in order to reconsider the ways one thinks about music and describes it.

2. The Communicative Situation of Music Discourse

Considering discourse a “mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts” (Definition of Discourse, 2020) we have to evaluate linguistic specifics of the texts that belong to a certain discourse taking into account the extralinguistic factors that shape it in the first place. The “sociolinguistic factors affecting message” (Lelouche & Huot, 1998, p. 524) could also be summarized in the term “communicative situation”, which refers to an “intermediate instance between the text and its historical-social situation” (Molina, 2009, p. 186).

The goal of our research lies in the description of the linguistic specifics of the modern music discourse. The accomplishment of this goal requires a deep understanding of the communicative situation of the discourse within which these specific features obtain their functions. To describe the communicative situation properly, we have to define the communicative situation variables and describe their spectrum.

The amount and type of communicative situation variables examined by an analyst depend on the model of communication chosen in a theoretical framework of a given research. Communication studies developed a great number of communication models the majority of which are built upon the basic scheme invented by Claude Shannon in 1948 (Shannon & Weaver, 1949) and now is known as Shannon-Weaver model. This model consists of seven major components: an information source, a transmitter, a channel, a message, a noise source, an information destination and a receiver.

Considering the specific empiric material of our research, namely a number of publications in modern media, we would like to address the extended version of the classic communication model created by DeFleur in 1970 (McQuail & Windahl, 1993, p. 17-18). This model fits the context of mass communication better as it includes feedback as the eighth element of the scheme. Actual audience response is very significant for such a small media niche as music journalism in today's Russia as it struggles to stay the course and fights desperately for readers' attention.

Thus, DeFleur's communication model would be a primary tool for the first stage of our research as here we would focus on the certain elements of the model to characterize the communication specifics of the music discourse. This said, in this chapter we would omit the detailed review of both transmitter and receiver which correspondingly encode and decode a message transferred from a source to a destination point as well as a message itself. These aspects of the scheme are connected with the linguistic specifics of the discourse per se and its encoding/decoding stylistics in particular. Those elements of the model would be explored in the next chapters of our project. Here we would like to focus on the analysis of the characteristics of other parts of the model. But first of all we have to define “music discourse” itself.

2.1 The Definition of Music Discourse

According to E. Aleshinskaya (2014, p. 6), in the context of critical discourse analysis “music discourse” has to be considered “a category of specific representation approaches to specific aspects of music life”. As far as this definition could be interpreted differently, there are four scientific approaches to music discourse:

1. Music as discourse (musicological approach);

2. Song lyrics as music discourse (philological approach);

3. Critical music discourse (critical discourse analysis and media studies approach);

4. The complex of utterances thematically connected with music (linguistic approach).

Our research apparently operates within the third approach. Moreover, the delimitation factors of the research shape the additional focus of our paper. Our project concentrates on the music discourse in specialized media, which is produced by music journalists; it is a sub-discourse of music discourse that could be called professional music discourse. According to E. Aleshinskaya (2014, p. 6), it “combines various types of paid labour that either require or do not require certain qualification” in the field of music.

2.2 The Information Source

In the communicative situation of the music discourse music media, or music journalists in particular, apparently play the role of an information source. There is a great difference between various types of music media which fulfill different functions as they target audiences also differ. Nevertheless, there are common trends which reflect the state of this media market sector in general.

As A. Semenova points out in her research (2014), there are three fundamental factors that influence the development of music journalism in any country: its political background, economic environment and spiritual values which are relevant for a certain historic period. Therefore, the major changes in music journalism take place in the transition periods in the country's history. Consequently, being the most significant political, economic and cultural shock for Russia people in the recent half of a century, the collapse of the Soviet Union also triggered the revolution in music journalism. The end of the Soviet Union meant the shift in the patterns of music consumption, the spread of alternative music tastes and, most importantly, the birth of the brand-new music industry.

A. Semenova outlines several trends that characterize Russian music journalism after 1991. In this part of the research we have to dwell on these tendencies projecting them on the state of the modern music discourse as a whole.

First of all, the substantial change in the foreign policy of the state initiated the cultural dialogue on all the levels of social life. Music journalism became more open to the greater stylistic variety of both journalism and music. The active participation of Russia in the process of globalization provided people with the access to various music styles and genres and greatly influenced public views on music.

Secondly, because of the enormous flow of information, the demand for an informational model of music journalism significantly increased. As people needed to orientate themselves within the new music world journalists provided them with music news and short reviews of recent releases. These publications mostly focused on a few key informative questions that almost fit in the standard 5W+H scheme of a short news item: who, what, where, when and, rarely, why and how.

Thirdly, at the same time an analytical model of music journalism became much less popular. The analytical or critical music discourses moved to the periphery as the types of music they are associated with also became marginalized. Since pop music overwhelmed the Russian music market music journalism has developed the informational model that fulfills the needs of a consumer sufficiently.

According to the definition of the social and cultural function of music journalism given by E. Kolomiytseva (2015), the conflict between the informational and analytical models of music journalism is connected with the natural duality of the latter. There are two fundamental roles that music journalism plays: evaluation and information sharing. The specifics of the overall media landscape influence the balance between these roles and define their interrelation. Nowadays, we could not refer to music journalism as to a part of “the applied musicology”, as T. Kurysheva puts it (2007), but rather have to consider it simply a rubric of the news journalism (Чурсинова, 2015).

In the fourth place, as noted above, certain genres and styles of music have lost previous popularity and gave place for others. The marginalization of modern classical music and various genres of soviet pop music as well as the boom of Western pop music meant the dramatic change in the music consumption in modern Russia. These new popular styles of music also brought to light the new music discourses, or rather sub discourses, which soon became dominant.

Finally, these changes resulted in the tectonic movements in the media landscape of music journalism. Firstly, large-volume music magazines decreased in popularity as well as printed music media in general due to the common digitalization trend. The leading magazines focused on classical music became glossy and thereby adopted its contents in accordance with the updated format (“Muzykalnaya Zhizn'”, “Muzyka y vremya”). In these circumstances there are two scenarios the specialized music media had to follow. Some media tried to maintain their marketability while struggling to compete with non-specialized ones and also switched from the analytical model of journalism to the informational model. Other media narrowed their audiences, cut down the staff and settled in their niches. At the same time, the non-specialized media such as lifestyle magazines developed a music section which also provided a reader with information about new concerts and releases. This model of music journalism proved to be the most viable in Russia in recent decades.

In accordance with the global changes in the media landscape, Russian music journalists also developed a new image of the author within their text. This category, as N. Klushina puts it, is “the most important stylistic element of any journalist text” (2004, p. 50) which shapes and arranges its general stylistics. Consequently, the change of this image largely affects the overall organization of the text and the tone of communication, too.

Building her classification upon the classic theory of V. Vinogradov, A. Semenova points out five types of authors in Russian music journalism: a musician; a critic; an ideologist, or an advertiser; a researcher; a communicant (Semenova, 2016). Every type of author is connected with certain types of music media:

Table 1 Types of authors in music journalism

Taking into account the latest evolution of music media, A. Semenova claims that the position of a communicant became more common among modern music journalists in Russia than the position of a critic. This trend could be seen in specialized media as well as in non-specialized ones since the demand for information outweighed the demand for reflection in general. This change immediately affected the basic requirements for a music journalist in media. Nowadays the majority of music journalists are not connected with music professionally as they do not have any background as musicians, composers, producers, sound engineers etc and also do not have any kind of music education. Most of the music journalists do not have a degree in musicology or music studies either. The majority of music journalists actually work in various sections being experts on modern culture in general (Semenova, 2016). Thus, the amount of general assignment journalists among music journalists increased whereas the number of musicologists or professional music critics in the field decreased correspondingly.

The essence of modern music journalism in Russia was brilliantly summed up by A. Mikheev (2011) who proposed to call the current writing model “informational DJing”. As far as consumers gained full access to any kinds of music nowadays the functions of music journalists are primarily connected with the filtering of the large flow of information and selection of the certain items which would meet the taste of the targeted audience of the media they work for. The egalitarian ethics of the Internet media also influenced the old media and set the standards for unostentatious presentation of information. Today, as Mikheev claims, a music journalist doesn't convince a reader or teach him a lesson on musicology, but rather serves readers' needs.

We also have to note here that the overall state of music journalism in Russia is critical, as claimed by various researchers (Михеев, 2011; Семенова, 2014). The marginalization and extinction of printed music media are not followed by the rise of the Internet music media. The demand for music journalism is extremely low nowadays among people of any age, gender or nationality. The current statistics provided via liveinternet.ru (LiveInternet: Рейтинг сайтов, 2020) demonstrates that among the top 10 music-related web-sites there are only two that could be characterized as journalistic projects: the youth web-zine “The Flow” and the online platform of the TV channel “Муз-ТВ”. Both of them could not be classified as quality journalism by any means. The majority of sites in the upper part of the rating are web archives of pirated music and song lyrics and chords aggregators. According to the newest annual report made by mediascope.net, there are no proper music media among the 142 most popular Russian Internet portals. Music media have low ratings in Russia, do not attract advertisers and thereby cannot provide themselves enough money to exist and develop.

Finally, we would like to figure the most important features of the information source within the communicative situation of the music discourse:

? The prevalence of the informational model of music journalism over the analytical model;

? The prevalence of communication over criticism;

? The prevalence of journalism over musicology;

? The prevalence of informational DJing over propaganda;

? The demolition of vertical communication model and the reinforcement of the horizontal communication model;

? The replacement of professional music critics for general assignment journalists;

? The extinction of specialized and professional printed music media and the growth of amateur online music media and non-specialized lifestyle media with music sections;

? The extension of the coverage and the spectrum of themes;

? The marginalization of analytical or critical discourses within music journalism;

? The dominance of pop music discourse within music journalism;

? The overall crisis of music journalism in Russia.

2.3 The Information Destination

The audience of specialized music media serve as an information destination in the communicative situation of the music discourse. There are a lot of ways to characterize media audiences which were developed by various media analysts within various scientific paradigms. Apparently, the proper and detailed analysis of the audience of modern Russian music journalism would require the particular research which would be very helpful for our project. Though, unfortunately, we could not digress from the very subject of our paper and have to limit ourselves with only a short and surface review of the audience of Russian music journalism nowadays.

According to D. McQuail's monograph (1997), there are four major typologies of audiences. We could consider the audience a social group; gratification set; medium audience; or an audience of the particular content. We would like to look at the audience of Russian specialized music media within the first three frames and combine its characteristics to create the comprehensive view of the information destination. (We have to omit the fourth frame here because it is problematic to apply it to all the types of content that various music media produce.)

First of all, we could view the audiences of specialized music media as various social groups. Looking back at the classification of music media, we can suppose that, firstly, the audience of the academic media is actually rooted in the music academia. The core audience of these media is music professionals who operate within the academic tradition and perform or study classical music. The music academia is a relevant example of a social group that serves as an audience of a specialized music magazine such as “Muzykalnaya Zhizn'”. Secondly, the audiences of hobby or professional music magazines also can be presented as social groups as far as these media usually clearly address the people who identify themselves as professional or amateur musicians who play different instruments. Thirdly, there are style-oriented music media which targeted audiences are the fans of certain styles or genres of music. Surely, not every music style forms a cohesive fanbase or an actual social group around itself. At the same time, there are no viable music media that cover the news of the genre which doesn't have a real following and doesn't make any social impact. Usually, music media address the large style-oriented communities that sometimes even form subcultures based on certain music styles and their aesthetics. Finally, there are general music media the audiences of which cannot be characterized as cohesive social groups since music fans or “melomaniacs” are rather a number of individuals than actually united collectives. Even though music lovers could unite using such social networks as rateyourmusic.com to create an online community, these cases remain the exceptions from the common rule. These groups of active music fans that gather online to discuss music or off-line to arrange a listening party could be called `professional listeners' and be referred to as social groups. At the same time, the social groups that serve as audiences for other, more specific types of music media could also be targeted by general music media with a broad music agenda.

As the audiences of specialized music media are mainly driven by their interests, the social groups audience typology overlaps with the gratification set typology. The gratification set audience typology defines the media audiences by looking at the interests and the tastes of consumers. Obviously, the audiences of all types of music media are shaped by their specific tastes in music or art in general. Though in some cases these audiences could be represented by certain social groups, usually they do not “have any sense of collective identity, despite some shared social-demographic characteristics” (MacQuail, 1997, p. 31). Therefore, we have to look closely at these characteristics to form a clear picture of the audience of specialized music media.

The majority of the style-oriented social groups are similar in the socio-demographic aspects and could be compared with the core audience of “The Flow”, the most popular style-oriented Internet music media in Russia that specializes in hip hop music. According to the report made by Bestseller Agency (2018), most of the readers of “The Flow” are male at the ages from 18 to 25. The core audiences of rock magazines tend to be 7-10 years older as far as the boom of rock culture in Russia happened one decade earlier than the boom of hip hop music.

The audience of the general music media usually obtain almost the same characteristics. For example, the core audience of the online magazine “TNT Music” (tntmusic.ru) is young people of any gender at the ages from 18 to 25. As far as youth is the primary consumer of modern music it is not surprising that the majority of music media adopt colloquial language, use slang and often refer to the modern youth culture within the publications. The core audience of “Zvuki.ru” (zvuki.ru), according to the official media kit (2016), is male (67% of readers) at the ages from 18 to 34 (64% of readers). “Zvuki.ru” was a leading online music media in Russian Internet since 2001 and up to 2016, as it is claimed in the same source, and its statistics fairly represent the overall state of general music media in the country.

The audience of hobby or professional music media is similar to the audience of style-oriented media. The vast majority of professional music media target guitar players, and the most important difference between these media lies in the music styles they lean towards. As far as media kits of a few professional music media that exist in Russia are not available, we could address the data presented by their Western analogues, such as “Guitar Interactive” and “Premier Guitar” magazines. In terms of the demographics the audience of “Guitar Interactive” resembles a rock magazine: the average age of its readers is 29 years and 89% of them are male (Guitarinteractivemagazine.com, 2018). Unsurprisingly, the aesthetics of the magazine are rooted in rock'n'roll culture and the majority of the men on the covers of the magazine are famous rock stars. On the other hand, “Premier Guitar” does not have such an apparent bias towards certain music styles and focuses more on the instrument subject. Consequently, its overall audience is wider, but the core audience of the magazine remains the same: male at the age from 25 to 34 (Digital.premierguitar.com, 2019).

The audience of academic music media is the only group that deviates from the common trend. It differs from others in various socio-demographic characteristics such as monthly income, social class, age, male/female proportion etc. Here we suppose that the communication specifics of the music discourse within academic media also differs from other music media since the information source and the information destination obtain other qualities.

The audience of specialized music media in Russia is primarily an Internet audience since the Internet proved to be the most appropriate medium for music journalism nowadays. Therefore, here we have to focus on the characteristics of the Russian Internet audience that differ it from the audiences of other media. First of all, the Internet audience is generally younger than the audiences of radio, TV and printed press. According to the annual report made by Mediascope in 2019 (Mediascope.net, 2019), the Internet is the most popular media in Russia among people at the ages from 12 to 44. The greatest demand for the Internet is shown by the young people from 18 to 24 years. Secondly, most of them use smartphones to connect to the Internet more often than the desktop devices whereas the majority of journalistic music media are designed for desktop screens. Thirdly, music is not included in the list of the top-priority interests of the Russian Internet users.

Finally, we have to sum up the characteristics of the information destination in the communicative situation of modern music discourse in Russia. The audience of Russian music journalism is:

? Primarily the Internet audience;

? People at the ages from 18 to 34;

? Primarily male;

? Disperse (does not form social groups) in case of general music media;

? Often represented by music-oriented social groups (fanbases of music bands or styles, music subcultures, music academia, professional listeners) in case of other types of music media;

? Driven by its music taste and interests.

2.4 The Channel

As noted above, the majority of modern music media in Russia operate on the Internet. (Even though there are TV and radio music media in Russia, we could not take them into account in our research as it focuses on the features of the written texts and explores the specifics of the written music discourse.) Nowadays in Russia there are no general music media and hobby or professional music media that exist exclusively in print. At the same time, there are few style-oriented music media that continue selling printed versions and maintain their marketability. The academic music media, in their turn, primarily function as printed magazines as their audiences are very loyal and consistent.

Therefore, first of all we have to assume that the dominant channel of distribution depends on the type and characteristics of the target audiences of the media. Those music media that target certain social groups tend to operate in the press whereas the media that target disparate audiences tend to operate on the Internet. Therefore, we would like to focus here on the difference between printed media and Internet media, or so-called new media, and emphasize the specific features of the latter.

The most important differences between analogue and digital media were enlisted in the classic media studies textbook edited by M. Lister (2010). The conceptual distinction between these types of media could be presented in the form of a table:

Table 2 Conceptual difference between printed and online media

NB: In the table we omitted such concepts as simulation and virtuality as they are either unimportant in our case or partly duplicate other given characteristics.

We also have to mention that, according to the 2018 report made by Deloitte (Deloitte.com, 2018), nowadays the printed media are the least trusted among other types of media in Russia whereas Internet media are the most trusted. At the same time, the popularity of the Internet grows annually, while the popularity of printed media continually decreases. It should be emphasized that printed music media have to have a strong following and well-established status to remain viable in today's circumstances.

Moreover, nowadays music printed media do not publish news and do not rely on currently important content in general because they could not compete with online media in relevancy. Printed media focus on other kinds of content that require more attention than regular news and is connected with more “timeless” subject matters (Шевелева, 2010).

According to the previously mentioned report, people usually read printed media in the early morning or in the evening, i.e. at home, before or after work. At the same time, people use the Internet much more often and the most popular time for the Internet surfing is basically working hours (12:00-18:00). Thus, printed media suppose other consumption conditions than Internet media. An average reading session is shorter for printed media than for online media, but it occurs in more comfortable circumstances and is more focused. Moreover, as far as people dedicate certain time in their everyday schedule for reading printed media, this reading process serves as an important ritual and is more valuable and presupposes more reflection.

These differences between the channels certainly affect the communicative situation of music discourse. The printed music media suppose focused and extremely motivated, `cold' reading, while the Internet media suppose more superficial and usually less motivated `hot' reading. In the first case a reader is guided by authors or an editor, while in the second case a reader rather paves his own way through the media content. The authoritarian approach of the old media is opposed here by the egalitarian approach of the new media. A magazine reader has less opportunities to immediately influence the content he or she reads or to express his or her opinion than an online reader who can leave a commentary under an article. The online media content is also more transferrable and flexible which means that an online reader is freer than a magazine reader in general.

Finally, the specifics of a chosen channel could play various roles in the communicative situation of the music discourse in the specialized media:

? Affect or reflect the level of readers' involvement;

? Affect the duration of a reading session;

? Affect the readers' confidence in the information;

? Reflect the level and the quality of readers' interest in the subject;

? Affect the readers' level of reflection;

? Affect the physical use conditions of the content.

2.5 The Noise

In the standard communication model, the noise is the “factor that reduces the chances of successful communication but does not guarantee failure” (Zaremba, 2012, p. 30). The possible communication noise in the communicative situation of the music discourse does not differ basically from other types of communication noise in media communication.

The presence or the possible effects of several types of noise in music discourse could be described according to the technical characteristic of the media channels, that supposes some types of noise in default, or the characteristics of the audiences. At the same time, the actual effects of communication noise could be observed via the feedback services that provide us with, for example, the commentaries to the articles or various types of the readers' reaction in social networks.

There are four main types of communication noise: physiological, physical, psychological and semantic (Wood, 2002). We would like to look through all the types of noise and evaluate their specifics within the context of the given communicative situation.

1. The physiological noise does not usually depend on the specifics of the communicative situation except the general condition of the subject of this noise. The physiological noise is a distractor, caused by various factors of one's well-being that could affect the communication,

2. The physical noise is provided by the physical environment of the communicative situation. In the given situation we could point out two main sources of physical noise:

Physical environment could interfere in the communication process in different ways. The weather and the outside temperature as well as noises by other people could affect the communicative situation by distracting a reader or creating the uncomfortable consumption conditions.

Media environment could play a significant role in the case of Internet media. Usually an article published online is surrounded by different web design elements such as search ads which are not connected with its content and do not contribute to its meaning, but rather distract a reader. The overall design of the site also affects the communicative situation as it could help a reader to get more involved in the communication or avert him.

3. The psychological noise is connected with people's personal qualities, preoccupations and prejudices which could somehow affect the message interpretation or the efficiency of communication in general. In the case of the communicative situation of music discourse in specialized media the psychological noise could be a result of several types of conflicts between an author and a reader. Here we would like to name the most sensitive types of conflicts that could occur in music journalism:

Taste conflict. As far as music taste is drastically important in music journalism as a factor of engaging or attraction of the audience, this type of conflict that occurs between a speaker and a reader may become a serious psychological noise source that could critically damage the communication.

Political views conflict. As any kind of art nowadays, music is politicized and, consequently, music reviewing also supposes the expression and valuation of different political ideas. This type of conflict is more likely to occur in general music media which are read by very diverse audiences with diverse political views.

Social conflict. There are genres and styles of music which represent the culture of certain social groups or even social classes. The adverse or simply indelicate reviews of the releases within such genres could result in the conflict between a reader and a journalist.

4. The semantic noise is linked with the qualities of the message transmitted during the communication process and thereby is the immediate subject of linguistics. The source of the semantic noise is the differences in the backgrounds of a reader and an author which cause certain problems in the decoding process and subsequent interpretation and understanding of the message. We have pointed out three major types of semantic noise in the communicative situation of music discourse in accordance with three elements of a sign in the classic triangular semantic model: symbol, concept and referent.

The proper semantic noise could basically be a product of the difference in the conceptual understanding of certain terms used in the music discourse. For example, a music journalist could use a certain term with the specific “professional” meaning whereas a reader would only recognize its “regular” meaning. This type of noise is inevitable in any type of communication as far as personal linguistic world images and thesauruses of two people never coincide with each other.

The lexical noise is a product of a conflict that takes place in the situation when a journalist uses music slang, professional terms and other symbols which are unknown for a reader. This conflict is common in the situations when music itself forces an author to use a certain discourse with very specific lexis. A reader could be aware of the objects a journalist refers to but is unaware of the terms he uses to structure or analyze certain music phenomena.

The referential noise is connected with the gaps in the readers' knowledge of certain objects, or referents. The reference in the forms of deixis or similes is extremely important in the music discourse and, consequently, the basic acquaintance with certain realia is fundamental for the proper understanding of the message and overall communication success.

Finally, we have to sum up the possible effects these types of noise could have on the communicative situation of music discourse in specialized media:

? Affect the level of readers' involvement;

? Affect the emotional attitude of a reader towards a message;

? Affect the way a reader interprets and understands a message;

? Affect the level of attention of a reader towards a message.

2.6 The Feedback

In the communication model our research relies on, feedback is a response given by the audience (information destination) to the media (information source). Generally, feedback has three major characteristics (Gill & Adams, 1998):

? It responds on a situation;

? It can modify the communicative situation;

? It may be positive or negative.

The feedback mechanisms within two primary channels of music journalism are apparently very different. The feedback of printed media is the least immediate and it also requires much more effort from a reader. At the same time, the Internet media obtain the most efficient feedback service as far as they have more technological opportunities to interact with their audiences.

The printed media maintain the vertical, or hierarchic, structure of media communication providing readers with unalterable content and relying on their loyalty. The media content that readers consume at the moment could not be modified by the feedback which could only affect further publications. On the other hand, the Internet media tend to pay close attention to readers' responses and react to them immediately. Consequently, the Internet media produce the more appropriate and effective approaches to communication than the printed media or simply working out the most efficient communication strategies faster than their rivals.

Finally, the influence feedback service has on the communicative situation consists in the quality of the interrelations of a reader and a media source. The delayed type of feedback in the printed media supports the hierarchic communication order and maintains the distance between a reader and a media source. The immediate type of feedback in the Internet media involves a reader and brings online communication closer to the actual dialogue.

3. Language Specifics of Music Discourse

The analysis of the communicative situation of music discourse leads us towards the next step of our research which is particularly dedicated to the proper linguistic specifics of music discourse, or the specifics of a communicative message itself.

The observations we have made during the review of the communicative situation partly supported our hypothesis concerning the stylistic specifics of modern music discourse. Characteristics of the primary audience of music journalism as well as features of the communication channels let us assume that specialized music media tend to use informal register in the communication with their readers. As far as music media target specific music subcultures or simply young people they adopt their language or at least adjust to it. Moreover, the discourse of styles of music these media are focused on also influence their language. Finally, Internet music media in particular are largely affected by Internet discourse itself which is also characterized by informal register. Thus, we suppose that music discourse mostly also operates in informal register and often uses colloquial language.

Our second hypothesis is linked to another feature of music discourse which was already mentioned above. Music discourse is difficult per se because of the nature of its subject. Music itself denies description and forces a speaker to use special linguistic devices to analyse it. First of all, it activates the referential functions of language, which, again, brings the language of music journalism closer to colloquialism. Secondly, it activates the metaphorical mechanisms of language which help a speaker to deal with the unknown objects by juxtaposing them with already known ones. Music phenomena could also be described analytically, but this approach requires special knowledge from a reader such as awareness of professional musicological terms. At the same time, metaphors allow a journalist to describe music in the most efficient way for a common reader.