Epistemologic and pragmatic peculiarities of headlines in the Russian contemporary press

There is discussed the specific of mass media texts in the light of general text theory; for instance, its aspect of information pregnancy - compressing and expanding. The understanding of a headline as a metatext sign in the text theory is considered. Also there are defined the general ways of influencing the reader and attracting the reader's unintentional attention to a headline of the journalistic text.