Éditorial – genre marqué axiologiquement

The article presents my reflections on the editorial, an opinion-shaping type of text, seen from the axiological perspective. It deals with the characteristic features of this kind of text, its special place in journalism and the question of moral responsibility of editorial staff for evaluative views expressed therein. In my article, I discuss evaluation on the textual and paratextual level. My analysis of an editorial on cloning from a French daily L’Humanité helps to show a range of linguistic tools that can be used to convey ethical standpoints. The focus in the article on bio-ethical issues reflects the general interest in subjects like abortion, cloning or the status of human embryos which give rise to many conflicts of values, and these manifest themselves in language.