Lingual features of English manipulative discourse

Лінгвальні особливості англомовного маніпулятивного дискурсу

У статті проаналізовано лінгвальні особливості англомовного маніпулятивного дискурсу у політичному контексті. Визначено поняття «маніпуляція», «дискурс», «політична мова». Досліджено стратегії мовної маніпуляції як складової частини комунікативної поведінки, а також вивчено особливості та види політичної комунікації. Отже, визначено чотири типи політичного дискурсу з маніпулятивним контентом, такі як бюрократична політична комунікація, публічна політична комунікація, журналістське політичне спілкування, політична мовленнєва діяльність пересічних громадян. Узагальнено функціональні ознаки мовних маніпуляцій, такі як моральний та психологічний вплив; прихований вплив, що сприяє виникненню ілюзії самостійного прийняття рішень та здійснення дій у адресата; поводження з об'єктами маніпуляції як із засобами досягнення власних цілей маніпулятора; бажання отримати одностороннє схвалення; лінгвістична вмотивованість. Здійснено порівняльний аналіз стратегій мовних маніпуляцій, реалізованих комунікантами в рамках передвиборчих дебатів, представлених у засобах масової інформації.

Найпоширенішими стратегіями та тактиками лінгвістичної маніпуляції визначено аргументацію, ілюстрацію прикладами, вживання точних даних та цифр, мовне протистояння, протидію опоненту, саркастичні коментарі, інтеграцію, єдність, тиск на емоції, дискредитацію опонентів, критику, безособове звинувачення. На основі аналізу передвиборчих дебатів як виду маніпулятивного дискурсу доведено, що домінуючими стилістичними засобами є анафоричні повтори (вживаються задля наголошення на певній дії чи думці), тавтологія (підкреслення факту і привернення уваги аудиторії), прості та складені епітети (підкреслення яскравості та емоційності повідомлення), гіпофори, персоніфікація, епіфора, паралелізм (вираження єдності та спільних інтересів із цільовою аудиторією).

Problem statement

In modern society, the social machine of manipulation of public consciousness functions quite effectively, which is a set of technologies of domination, one of the important elements of which is the media. In the arsenal of their means of manipulating the consciousness, mass media, including print and electronic have a considerable stock of different techniques, rules and principles of creating messages that work well and quite effectively cope with attracting attention and influence on the reader. Today, such information should be both possessed and able to be detected, in particular by computer methods.

Due to the rapid development of information technology and globalization trends, the world is becoming more united. Under these circumstances, the role of language used in politics is growing. Discussion is a genre of political discourse, the importance of which is sharply felt not only by scientists but also by politicians. The study of political discourse is important in a democratic society, because democracy is not so much a set of procedures and their use, as a dialogic interaction between different political parties, social movements and even individuals. Therefore, the article is devoted to the study of the problem of manipulation of modern media.

The relevance of the study lies in the need to study the linguistic features of manipulative discourse in order to create an effective model of public speaking and adequate and correct understanding of language manipulation by the target audience.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to focus on the following aspects:

Research methods: comparative method, analysis, synthesis, descriptive and analytical (complex translation analysis, linguistic description and contrastive analysis, contextual and transformational analysis, lexicographic and component methods, critical analysis, comparison of points of view) methods.

Presentation of the main material

The definition of manipulation in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is to «skillfully manage or use» and “control <.. .> by cunning, unjust or insidious means, especially for one's own benefit” (“to manage or utilize skillfully” and “to control <.> by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage”). The dictionary defines the media as “the system and organizations of communication through which information is spread to a large number of people” (“the system and organizations of communication through which information is spread to a large number of people”) (Dictionary by Merriam-Webster).

Thus, manipulation of the media can be defined as “managing the system and organizations for their own benefit” Although manipulation of the media has been interpreted differently in the past, this legal definition of the term may be one of the most complete and comprehensive: “the act of creating an image or argument that promotes certain interests”. This legal definition complements the definition that manipulation of the media may include the use of “logical errors and propaganda techniques” as well as “suppression of information or views”. In this case, the term media manipulation means “the use of social media platforms to spread misleading or inaccurate misinformation” (Polyakova, Yuzhakova, Zalavina, Dyorina, 2020: 31).

The media play an important role in modern society. It is a powerful resource used by politicians, and accordingly it has contributed to the creation of such a phenomenon as political language. As a result, the information field has become very contradictory and has created a set of different representations of the same phenomenon, reality or event, often mutually exclusive.

A striking example of manipulative discourse is political language, so we consider it appropriate to analyze it. Political language is a special sign system designed for political communication. It is not the prerogative of professional politicians or civil servants, but a resource which is open to all members of the language community and associated with a certain use of public language as a means of persuasion and control. Political language can be defined as a subsystem of the national language intended for political communication, including the promotion of certain ideas, emotional impact on citizens and their subsequent motivation for certain political actions, the development of public consensus.

Political language is widely available because it is located between two poles: a functionally determined special language and the slang of a certain group with its own ideology. Therefore, political language must be accessible to understand according to the goals propaganda and is focused on a particular group for some historical, social and psychological reasons. In other words, political language is deprived of the property of “secret language”. It does not contain a specific lexicon, unknown and unfamiliar to some members of society. Thus, language becomes political because of the content of the transmitted information and the circumstances under which the dissemination of information and functions takes place. Political language is a political reality, because language is not only a tool for describing certain events, but also a part of them that has a strong influence on the formation of their value, contributing to the formation of political roles recognized by politicians and society as a whole (Winn, 1997: 35).

According to A.P. Chudinov, there are four types of political communication:

Thus, it is obvious that the distinguishing feature of political communication is its mass character. This explains why political language is applied to different types of influence: persuasion, control, manipulation, and the media become its direct means of implementation and realization.

In our opinion, the main signs of manipulation are:

A clear example of manipulative discourse is political debate. Today, election debates are increasingly attracting the attention of representatives of various scientific disciplines, such as political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, linguists, researchers of the media. This is not accidental and is due to the fact that the election debate as a subject of research represents a wide field of activity and can be analyzed in various aspects.

On the one hand, debate is a genre of political discourse, and the importance of studying it is acutely felt not only by scholars but also by politicians. As a result of the rapid development of information technology and trends towards globalization, the world is becoming more united. Under these conditions, the role of language used in politics is growing (in high-level negotiations, in speeches of politicians and statesmen, in presidential messages, in parliamentary debates, etc.).

Debate is a form of campaigning (along with political advertising, meetings with voters, etc.), and therefore it has the characteristics of advertising discourse. The election debate can be seen as an example of dialogue, oral speech, which is actively studied in both domestic and foreign linguistics (Yuryeva, 2006: 112).

The increase in attention to oral communication in recent decades is due to the general shift of interest from language as a structure to the analysis of language as an activity, from language competence to communicative. Thus, the concept of discourse emerges and various areas of oral speech are formed, such as linguistic pragmatics, conversion analysis, interactive sociolinguistics, discursive analysis, communicative linguistics, and so on.

The extract to be analyzed in this section is the transcript of the first Trump-Clinton presidential debate held in Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on September 26, 2016. It represents the 90-minute debate between Democratic nominee for president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, and Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, moderated by Lester Holt, anchor of “NBC Nightly News”. So three people are involved in the discussion: Lester Holt, who has an ancillary character despite his moderating role, and two main characters Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

We analyzed a certain part and considered both the strategy and tactics of linguistic manipulations and the language tools used by both speakers in each segment.

The first part, or the opening segment, is focused on the topic “Achieving Prosperity”, and the main topic here is Job. The first issue the opponents are discussing is why they are better choice to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American workers. Clinton starts first and uses continuous anaphoric repetition in order to emphasize her positive intentions and plans, saying:

Here Clinton uses an integration strategy, which is implemented through the tactic of unity in the form of appeal to ordinary people, using a plural personal pronoun us. After saying that she also uses anaphora in the form of call for action (let us) to appeal to the potential voters for joining efforts to have good conditions to balance family and work:

In the last Clinton applies one more effective lexical stylistic device such as simple and compound epithets (paid, earned, affordable, debt-free) that belong to the same topic and express what people want to hear, thus appealing to their emotions.

Further she continues to use the tactic of unity with the help of hypophora, which consists in posing a question and answering that question immediately:

“How are we going to do it? We're going to do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes” (The first Trump-Clinton presidential debate, 2016).

Trump begins his discourse with personification, giving the jobs the ability to flee and go:

Further Trump resorts to epiphora by repeating the same word (leaving) at the end of each successive clause and in this way emphasizes that they are losing their jobs:

Next Trump proceeds with the parallelism accompanied by the chain of anaphoric constructions, which starts with the personal pronoun we to show unity and mutual interests with his potential voters. Integration strategy is used here:

The first and the last sentences in the previous utterance by Trump express the same idea, which means that he uses tautology. He repeats the same phrases two times but in a slightly different way (pas- sive and active voices) to put stress on the fact and draw audience's attention.

Trump undertakes self-promotion strategy realized through the tactic of promise, making boast of his prospective plans and self-advertising himself and his ideas. He draws the picture of prosperous future with his participation as a President of the USA:

Trump employs a repetition (will come, will build, will expand, will start) in the statement above in order to achieve the desired effect, that is, to persuade the audience to vote for him because the promising future is waiting for them.

We analyzed two segments of the first discussion, focusing on both rhetorical strategies and tactics and stylistic techniques and means of expression used by opponents. We found out the most common strategies and tactics used by opponents during the first debate (Table 1).

Table 1

language manipulation communication

1. Чудинов А.П. Метафорическая мозаика в современной политической коммуникации: монография. Екатеринбург: Уральский государственный педагогический университет, 2003. 248 с.

2. Юр'єва О.Г. Лінгвістичний вимір політичного маніпулювання: дис. ... канд. політ. наук: спец. 23.00.02. Донецьк, 2006. 199 с.

3. Dictionary by Merriam-Webster.

4. Polyakova L., Yuzhakova Y., Zalavina T., Dyorina N. Linguistic Manipulation Means in English Political Discourse. AmazoniaInvestiga. 2020. № 9 (33). P. 27-36.

5. Washington Post. The first Trump-Clinton presidential debate transcript, annotated.

6. Winn D. Manipulated mind England. N.-Y., 1997, 87 p.

1. Chudinov A.P. Metaforicheskaja mozaika v sovremennoj politicheskoj kommunikacii [Metaphorical mosaic in modern political communication]. Monograph. Ural. state ped. un-t. Ekaterinburg, 2003. 248 p. [in Russian].

2. Yuryeva O. G. Lingvistychnyj vymir politychnogo manipulyuvannya [Linguistic dimension of political manipulation]: dissertation of Candidate of Political Sciences: 23.00.02. Donetsk, 2006. 199 p. [in Ukrainian].

3. Dictionary by Merriam-Webster.

4. Polyakova L., Yuzhakova Y., Zalavina T., Dyorina N. Linguistic Manipulation Means in English Political Discourse. Amazonia Investiga, 2020, 9 (33), pp. 27-36.

5. Washington Post. The first Trump-Clinton presidential debate transcript, annotated.

6. Winn D. Manipulated mind England. N.-Y., 1997. 87 p.

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