On the issue of verbal discrimination in contemporary media discourse

Найбільш розповсюдженим засобом актуалізації дискримінації у медійному дискурсі є антитеза. Протиставлення є основою дискримінаційної спрямованості медіадискурсу, основна мета якого розділити аудиторію на «своїх» та «чужих». Вельми розповсюдженими є також декларативні твердження навішування ярликів та лексеми негативної оцінки опонентів. Всі інші мовні засоби постають додатковими на їхньому фоні. Взаємодія різнорівневих мовних засобів сприяє посиленню експресивності дискримінаційної спрямованості риторики адресантів медіадискурсу та їхнього мовленнєвого впливу на адресатів. Добір словесних ярликів відтворює ідеологічну позицію адресанта, створючи дискримінаційний образ ворога, як окремої людини, і групи осіб, так і країни. Експресивні слова та висловлювання перешкоджають об'єктивному сприйняттю інформації, що є основою дискримінації.

discriminative discourse-perception verbalizing ideology

Introduction

Despite the elimination of discrimination legislation in many countries of the world and the amendments to the actual legislative acts on the international arena (e.g. Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Among Women, Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as Secretary-General's Bulletin on Prohibition of Discrimination, Harassment, Including Sexual Harassment, Abuse of Authority ST/ SGB/2008/5) (International Convention, 2008) discrimination is still one of the most urgent issues of the modern society.

Discrimination is any discrepancy, exception, limitation, privilege or any other differentiated attitude which is directly or indirectly grounded by the forbidden causes and is aimed at or is due to the annulment or understatement of the recognition, employment or realization on equal terms of human rights and basic freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural and any other fields of social life (Introduction to Sociology, 2009).

As a means of expressing the basic ideological and axiological positions language is also an efficient tool of social consciousness influence. The current period of humanity development is distinguished by the active growth of information technology and the introduction of the advanced formats and means of media. The mass media have become the chief culture-generating factor of the modern society as well as media reality or world picture thus constructed and represented.

The recently detected shifts of communication focus to the negative periphery have resulted in identifying this type of communication as the one based upon biases and discrimination (Stangor, 2009: 16). Such communication is grounded by stereotypical cognitive schemes, negative settings and discriminative intentions related to any people.

Discrimination is «unfair relationship with the people, representing a certain group» (Stangor, 2009: 16). While biases and stereotypes are of cognitive and mental nature, discrimination as a result of their action is behaviorally conditioned.

Discrimination may be performed both verbally and non-verbally. Discrimination is revealed nonverbally in prioritizing, not treating on equal terms and even in physical responses. Discrimination may be shown verbally as a mode of communicating with people belonging to particular groups, underestimated or bullied by others.

Problem setting

Verbal discrimination which is also termed as “hate speech”, “verbal aggression”, “biased language”. While treated as a communicative phenomenon discrimination can't be regarded without any reference to the utterance function in the context of the particular discourse.

The objective is the detailed study of the peculiarities of any type of discriminative social practices and mainly deep understanding of the ways of verbalizing and affecting our consciousness. It is the correlation “discourse - perception” which mainly explains how superstitions and ideologies are rendered, translated, distributed and reproduced in the society.

The research was conducted on the basis of the speeches and addresses given by Donald Trump since the beginning of his campaign in 2015 and up to 2021, the last year of his presidency. The topicality was dedicated to the issues of foreign and domestic policy including both migration challenges and weapon control. The information resource was Rev service which hosted the scripts of the addresses by Donald Trump, namely: ''Remarks Announcing Candidacy for President in New York City”, “The final Trump-Clinton debate, Remarks Following the Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, New Jersey and California Primary Elections, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Melbourne, Florida, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Louisville, Kentucky, Remarks During a Meeting With Victims of Crimes Committed by Immigrants, Speech at Mount Rushmore, Speech in Charlotte, Inaugural Address (Inaugural Address, 2009) and Twitter archives on the website of the University of California in the framework of the project “The American Presidency Project” (D. Trump's Archives, 2012).

The research was carried out on the total corpus of 62876 linguistic units with the average volume of 100 pages.

The following methods and techniques were employed:

The theoretical and applied value of the research paper is seen both in the deeper investigation of the media discourse theory and the phenomenon of discrimination as well as its manifestation in mass media.

Political, corporative, media, educational and scientific elites monitor the most relevant aspects and deal with the issues concerning the life of immigrants and ethnic minorities, such as repatriation, residence, employment, education, welfare, knowledge, information and culture. This management is fulfilled mostly via media.

Media discourse as such is studied as a form of verbal discrimination, which is also true for other social practices opposed to the minorities. Thus, media discourse spreads out biases and prejudices which underlie verbal discriminating practices realized via texts, speech and communication on the whole.

Discrimination system comprises social and cognitive subsystems. Social subsystem is constituted by social discrimination practices on the local micro level and abuse on the part of the dominant group, authorities and institutes of the global macro level.

Still another discrimination subsystem is a cognitive system. Hence the discriminative practices of the dominant group members are forming the apparent and distinctive discrimination manifestations they appear to have a mental basis comprised by the evaluative models of ethnic events and relationship consequently enrooted in discriminative superstitions and ideology. This predetermines that discriminative practices presuppose both socially divided and negatively oriented “Our” mental representations about “Them”.

Ethnic superstitions and ideologies are not inherent and do not arise spontaneously. They are normally acquired in the course of communication. And, on the contrary, discriminative mental representations are habitually expressed, formulated, defended and legitimated in the discourse and thus may be restored and circulated in the society. Media discourse is becoming a powerful kind of discriminative practice due to its all-pervasiveness via modern mass media means.

Media discourse is very persuasive and affects the personality both by means of the language and ideology, distributed by images, metaphors and cliches.

The dynamic development of information technology results in the fact that media discourse texts are the most common of language existence while their total length surpasses the general volume of speech in other fields of human activity.

Media discourse is realized in the media space. Media space is understood as the set of mass media personalities and communities, texts, produced by them and the collective addressee which is supposed to perceive these texts - the target audience. Media discourse types are interconnected with the genre and functional peculiarities of the media space.

Media discourse - is the acting discourse type, a text of any topicality with the mandatory political and ideological text formulation modus. The media discourse addresser is aimed at getting some certain reaction from the addressee by employing various techniques of persuasion and manipulation.

The so-called group polarization which serves as the basis of the key superstitions proves to be one of the most efficient manipulation techniques of the modern English media discourse. This may be also realized through the general tendency of in-group favoritism or positive self-presentation and out-group humiliation or negative presentation of the others which is the basis of discrimination.

In other words, by means of various elusive structures of meanings, forms and actions discriminative discourse normally highlights our positive and their negative traits and also conceals or underestimates our negative and their positive sides. This general fourdimensional ideological scheme is employed both in dominance and in polarization “relatives -strangers” (“in-group - out-group”) in social practices, discourse and thinking. It's mostly about discourse “senses”, that is beliefs and cognition. Media discourse is treated not as merely the form of interaction or social practices but it also expresses and translates senses and thus influences our beliefs.

According to Teun van Dijk, social communicants rely not only on their beliefs and personal experience but also on the collective boundaries, social superstitions structures and speculations termed as social impressions. Trying to draw a clear line between the structural features and social characteristics of a particular text, Teun van Dijk proposed a two-level structure of analysis, which involves the allocation of micro-levels and macro-levels. Social cognition is “a system of mental representations and processes of group members” (Teun van Dijk, 1997: 18).

That is, these mental representations are shared basic knowledge that is reflected in human consciousness in the form of schemas. These schemas are systems that shape the thoughts, beliefs, and experiences of people under the strong influence of ideology. “Ideologies ... are general, abstract mental systems that organize... socially common views” (Teun van Dijk, 1997: 18). Consequently, social cognition, which shapes social ideologies, has a tangible impact on personal cognition and shapes the ways in which people interact and react to social communicative events. Teun van Dijk called such individual mental representations “models” that “control how people act, speak, or write, or how they understand the social practices of others”. He also distinguished the concept of models, using the concept of mental processes, which is based on the opposition of “us” and “them” (Teun van Dijk, 1997: 263).

Figure 1 presents the dual strategies of positive “internal group” characteristics and negative “outgroup” characteristics; i.e., “WE” represents all favorable “good” and “THEY” represents all unfavorable “bad”.

These strategies are divided into two levels of analysis: the macro level includes four principles that underpin discriminatory practices:

The micro-level includes linguistic elements that represent the main rhetorical discursive strategies, namely: description of the actor, authority, categorization, comparison, consensus, counterfacts, disclaimer, euphemisms, evidence, illustration/example, generalization, hyperbole, subtext, irony, lexicaliza- tion, metaphor, national self-glorification, expression of the norm, number play, polarization, populism, preposition, uncertainty, and victimization.

Linguistic Analysis of Discrimination in Modern English Language Media Discourse. Findings.

Linguistic analysis of discrimination in modern English language media discourse on the basis of D. Trump's speeches has made it possible to identify the main focus groups that are subjected to verbal discrimination on his part. These are representatives of radical Islamist organizations, immigrants, the administration of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, his political opponent during the presidential election race from the US Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, and a number of media outlets that criticize his actions and statements - unjustified from the point of view of D. Trump himself.

Verbal discrimination in the studied material is based on the principle of distortion of information, which is realized by means of the certain speech techniques, which in turn are expressed through linguistic means (lexical, syntactic, stylistic, etc.).

The difficulty of classifying the techniques and means of verbal discrimination lies in the fact that several methods are often used at the same time, some techniques overlap with others and it is difficult to establish boundaries between them. However, the analysis of the material showed that it is possible to talk about the existence and use of typical methods of manipulating information, which is the basis of verbal discrimination, due to its distortion.

Speech techniques of information distortion include labeling, the use of the communicative category “friend or foe” and the means of expressing speech for discriminatory purposes. By means of these techniques, reality is embellished or denigrated, a certain attitude towards the reported phenomenon is formed: approval, admiration or, conversely, disapproval, contempt. Various nominations often turn into stereotypes, cliches or labels.

“Labeling” is one of the most effective techniques for manipulating information. A label is an unreasoned, biased characteristic of a person or phenomenon, expressed in an emotionally colored form. Its influencing power is noted by C. Greer as follows: “A negative nomination is a journalistic label that “condenses” a negative emotional charge, which has a powerful impact on the reader's perception” (C. Greer, 2018: 120).

Labels are used in media discourse to achieve goals beneficial to the manipulator: “The technique of “sticking labels” is the use of negative words in order to discriminate against ideas, plans, personalities, to evoke feelings of prejudice, fear, hatred, without resorting to an objective assessment” (C. Greer, 2018: 130). “The danger of labels lies in the fact that, coming into wide use primarily due to the media, they take root for a long time, become habitual, everyday words, sometimes replacement, displacing other, adjacent, but less aggressive concepts” (C. Greer, 2018: 130).

Labels have an influential force, and the choice of nomination most often depends on the ideological position of the addressee of the media discourse. “In journalism, a label is not just a template and a disapproving characteristic of an object, a person, a phenomenon, but their ideological interpretation” (C. Greer, 2018: 140).

At the same time, the addressee positions himself extremely positively, trying to achieve an exceptionally favorable impression of himself among the addressees. This goal is facilitated by adjectives of positive evaluation in relation to the addressee, his actions and the actions of his party, both in the positive degree of comparison and in the highest and highest:

“We are free and independent people, and we will make our own choices. We are here today to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I hear your demands, I hear your voices, and I promise you I will deliver. I promise that.”

“I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”

The most important reference point in the comprehension of the world is the communicative category of “friend or foe”. It reflects the binary nature of the world order, the division into “ours” (recognized, approved, safe) and “alien” (what is rejected, disapproved, hostile). The objects of manipulation are various associations (parties, nations, countries) or individual carriers of socio-political features (political opponents). On the one hand, the communicative category of “friend or foe” helps the addressee to orient himself in space. But, on the other hand, this category can be used for manipulative purposes, to the detriment of the addressee, to change his preferences, views and value attitudes. The manipulative nature of the “friend or foe” category influences the construction of stereotypes, tactics and strategies in media discourse. Most often, the category of “friend or foe” is expressed using the pronouns “we”, “ours” and “they”, “alien”, “theirs”.

The choice of morphological forms and syntactic constructions in political discourse can be determined by the ideological position of the addressee. The pronouns we and they demonstrate the orientation of the speaker in space, are signs of union and alienation. Moreover, the category “friend” is assessed positively, and the category “stranger” - negatively.

Traditionally, it is believed that the category of “friend or foe” is an integral component of political discourse, since each political movement seeks to identify its supporters and opponents. However, this category is often used to create a negative image of an opponent or enemy, and then the information is imposed on the addressee within the framework of media discourse.

The linguistic means used by the addressee play a special role in the comprehension of the text. There is a scale of values that determines the choice and distribution of evaluative means in the texts of mass communication. In this way oppositions are formed in the language of journalism, including words that are close in meaning, but sharply opposite in the stylistic impression caused by them: “our” intelligence officers are “their” spies. “Our” conviction is “their” fanaticism, etc. Such a clash of “us” and “them” is not nominally necessary, it is a psychologically conditioned desire to distinguish between close entities. The manipulative potential of this category is manifested in the selection of linguistic means. In contrast to labeling, the category of “friend or foe” is actively used by government officials whose words are broadcast in the media discursive space. The pronouns “we” and “our” actualize the signs of “number” and “unity” due to the grammatical category of number.

The pronouns “they”, “other”, “she” are used as markers of foreignness as opposed to “we”, “I”, “our”, etc.:

Labels are actively used to replace reasoning and give an unambiguous negative assessment of events and subjects. The label has an accusatory orientation.

The labels used, represented by adjectives of negative semantics, are aimed at accusing the media and Democrats of lying and undermining presidential activities. Similar labels are also used in relation to D. Trump's fellow party members. For example, Texas Senator Ted Cruz earned the nickname “Lyin' Ted” after refusing to support Trump's immigration policies.

Conclusions

Analysis of the lexical and grammatical means of actualizing verbal discrimination in mass media discourse gives grounds to assert that verbal labels are a powerful vehicle of discrimination and manipulation. Nominations are deliberately introduced into the media text, resulting in the deliberate distortion of the idea of reality in the addressee's consciousness. These labels are often unfounded, subjective, emotional characteristics of a person or phenomenon, cause negative associations and lead the reader to the discriminatory conclusions necessary for the addressee. This technique is implemented through the use of nouns, adjectives with negative semantics, denoting activities that are condemned by society, or the character of a person, the qualities of his personality. In addition, the wide distribution of the third person singular and plural pronouns, allows to distance the speaker from his/her opponents, who are thus subjected to verbal discrimination. The selection of verbal labels reproduces the ideological position of the addressee, creating a discriminatory image of the enemy, as an individual, a group of people, and a country. Expressive words and expressions interfere with the objective perception of information, which is the basis of discrimination.

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