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Background: modern linguists, who study language features of media, fix significant increase in irony and language games in headlines and heading complexes. Authors of media messages abundantly use the puns based on a polysemy of words, use different kinds of metaphors, precedent texts and names. Specificity of mainstreaming precedent phenomena in the media headlines is the fact that the headline is a complex linguistic phenomenon, possessing cognitive performance. Heading complex, as well as media discourse as a whole, which has properties such as metaphors and precedentiality, quite often acts as an object of the language game with different cognitive mechanisms and processes. Methods: the research guide to this article is a comprehensive analysis of the cognitive aspect of language game on the example of precedent phenomena, which are actualized in the headlines of modern media texts. We use the term "precedent phenomenon", which is general and includes the notation "case text", "case-situation", "case-name". Precedent phenomena are nuclear elements of the cognitive framework as a set of key knowledge of the ethnic groups to which the individual belongs, this knowledge is known to every average representative of the ethnic groups. Conclusions: that is why today's headlines in the media contain a huge number of precedent phenomena known to the average resident of the country. Cognitive approach to the study of headlines containing the elements of language game within the precedent phenomena is that precedent phenomena are treated as special mental structures - concept-frames containing information on a typical situation of implementation of messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]