Adducing weighty arguments to demonstrate that in the investigation of political media-texts it is expedient to resort to discourse-analysis, A.Yu. Shevchenko then presents a review of the results of the most promising, to her mind, trends in the practice of such analysis. The most detailed exposition in the article is devoted to the methods of discourse- analysis proposed by T. van Dijk in his monograph "Discourse of the Elite and Racism". The methods in question, according to the conclusion of the author of the article, are universal and may be used for the study of any, including political, media-texts.