Discourse studies, being quite extensive in recent decades, remain more focused on literary genres (poems, short stories, novels), which are subject to consideration as pragmalinguistics and sociolinguistics for a particular recipe ideas typical situation. Meanwhile, newspapers and publicistic discourse can be considered a vast field for research, both from the point of view of text structures, its content and formal features, not the least of which are the figures of speech, in particular, allusion. The variety of types of allusions in newspaper and magazine texts and their titles gives them the richness, emotion and angst. This article discusses the text – discourse distinguishing; intertextuality and its features; peculiarities of functioning of the allusions in the headlines of newspaper and magazine articles in English. Also, the article provides statistical data on the frequency of allusions to the most vivid thematic groups such as culture, sports, economics and politics. Being a very interesting element of intertextuality, allusion has its potential in the process of formation of skills of all types of speech activity.