The first human spaceflight in the headlines of Soviet newspapers (a linguocultural aspect)

Abstract

The article studies the linguocultural features of the Soviet newspaper articles’ headlines about the events of April 12, 1961 and the following days. The flight into space of the first cosmonaut, the citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, became a world event and had an enormous ideological, political, scientific, technical, cultural and universal influence. Newspaper headlines expressed the people’s joy and their attempts to understand the importance of this flight. The research material is based on the headlines of articles published in central Soviet newspapers between April 12 and 20, 1961 (The Pravda, The Izvestya, The Trud, The Komsomolskaya Pravda, The Sovetsky Sport). The choice of sources is determined by their significant circulation and popularity with different audiences. Using the structural and semantic approach, the methods of contextual analysis and description, we identify lexemes that reflect the main values of the Soviet period. The combination of expression and standard in newspaper articles and their headlines allows us to highlight the special modality of publications. The first articles about the space flight are an informational message and an emotional reaction to the epochal event, so the first headlines are a headline-address, a headline-report, a headline-motto, a headline-interview, a headline-congratulation and a headline-gratitude. According to stylistic peculiarities, the first headlines should be determined as headlines-hyperboles, headlines-epithets, headlinesmetaphors and headlines-oxymorons, there are also headlines based on synonymous or antonymous varieties, and on precedent texts. The headlines contain an assessment of the event (space flight) and express admiration for the first cosmonaut of the Earth, Yuri Gagarin. The key words in the article titles are victory, feat, triumph; in the description of the first cosmonaut of the Earth – hero, son (of the people, party, Fatherland), Soviet man, etc. are used. The newspaper headlines reflected the key values of the “country of victorious socialism”, which are similar to universal human values.