English “Female” Psychological Podcast: the Distinguishing Discourse Features in the Realm of the Functional Stylistics

The article focuses on the analysis and stylistic determination of female psychological podcasts in the English language, analyzes their relation to the media discourse as well as to the functional styles and substyles. The study represents the podcast phenomenon, justifi es its growing popularity and provides the list of the current most popular podcast genres. The comprehensive analysis of various approaches to the “style” notion, clarifying the “scientifi c functional style” term and its popular scientifi c substyle allows us to consider the podcast as a media text within the framework of a “scientifi c style – scientifi c popular style” paradigm. Moreover, the article comprises the matter of the stylistic contamination (scientifi c, publicistic and casual/non-formal ones) premise in podcasts based on lexico-syntactic means of speech. The frequency of stylistic interactions demonstrates the stylistic contamination process in the given type of discourse, proving the relevance of the stated linguistic issue.