PRAGMALINGUISTIC FEATURES OF CLICKBAITING STRATEGY IN THE HEADLINES OF YOUTUBE EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of such a phenomenon as clickbaiting from the point of view of linguistic pragmatics. The analysis focuses on pragmalinguistic features of the clickbaiting strategy in the headlines of English YouTube educational videos. In particular, formal-structural, lexical and syntactic features are investigated. The material of the study makes up about 200 titles for videos about the ways and means of learning foreign languages, chosen by random selection in the YouTube network. Clickbaiting is defined as a manipulative strategy in headlines that deliberately misleads YouTube users and encourages them to click the link. This is supposed to result in benefit, different from the one stated in the title. It has been established that the pragmalinguistic features of the clickbaiting strategy in the titles to the video about the ways and means of learning foreign languages are as follows: a fixed number of words in the title (from 5 to 12); one-component and two-component title models; use of verbs typical for effective learning in the imperative and infinitive form; qualitative adjectives in degrees of comparison for hyperbolization of value; quantitative numerals for specification, indefinite-personal pronouns with the meaning of generalization. The most commonly used syntactic structures are nominative (including those with participle constructions) and infinitive constructions.