The article is devoted to the linguistic analysis of the semantics and functioning of comparative units in publicistic discourse. It notes that the category of comparative actively interacts with the categories of emotional evaluation, imagery and intensity, and that as a result of comparison they appear as units of speech in which the “Subject - Ground - Object” model is implemented. In the corpus of comparative units, there are comparisons-associations (figurative), which serve to metaphorize the statement, and comparisons-identities, represented by turns of subject-logical and comparative-comparative types. In journalistic discourse, comparisons formed in a syntactic way are the most common, lexical means of expressing comparative meaning are less commonly used, morphological means of formalizing comparison are the least common. Among the means of formalizing the semantics of comparison, dominated by subordinating conjunctions, specialized in the transfer of the semantics of comparison and characterized by a comparative-comparative (what) or modal-comparative function (as if, as if, exactly), and a non-specialized conjunction (as). It is proved that comparative units are included in the structural organization of both simple and complex sentences, often forming a peripheral zone.