Introduction. Media discourse reflects the cognitive and national-cultural characteristics of the creators and recipients of a media text, providing the relationship between the strategies of journalists and the interpretation of the text by readers. Due to virtual communication between authors of newspaper texts and readers who can leave online comments, the nature of media discourse becomes polylogical. The purpose of the study is to provide a linguistic analysis of the media text about the death of Queen Elizabeth II and to identify means of expressing the emotional attitude of the British to the fact of the monarch’s death. Research data includes firstly, news articles (N=10) posted on the websites of British newspapers immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and secondly, reader comments to the news articles (N=3,788). The authors used methods of linguistic, stylistic and systemic analysis of text in order to identify language units that express an emotional attitude towards the loss of the monarch. Results. We studied the prevailing tone of the text, and compared the expression of positive and negative assessments in newspaper articles and in reader comments. It was revealed that a positive tone prevails both in articles and in comments (94 % and 86 %, respectively), with a positive assessment expressed in relation to the personality of Elizabeth II, and a negative assessment in the form of criticism of the British monarchy. Discussion. Expressiveness is achieved through the use of emotional vocabulary, hyperboly and intensifiers, which is characteristic of both news text and comments. The readers sincerely admire with the queen and highly appreciate her power and merits, which is reflected in emotive vocabulary used in the comments. Conclusion. The research showed that the values of British culture (historical memory and patriotism) are directly related to the personality of Elizabeth II as a unifying force and the symbol of the entire nation.