VERBALIZATION OF MANIPULATIVE STRATEGIES IN SOCIAL NETWORKS FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Abstract

The article deals with the specificity of verbalizing manipulative strategies and tactics, used in the networks Facebook and Twitter. The relevance of the present paper is determined both by the modern research paradigm of linguistics, in the center of which mass communication as a linguistic and psychological phenomenon appears, and by the insufficient degree of investigation of the peculiarities of realizing the manipulative potential in the discourse of social networks. The purpose of our study is to identify, systematize and analyze the leading strategies and tactics of language manipulation and the means of their implementation in the social networks Twitter and Facebook, which over the past decades have been leading communication platforms in the world. The object of the study is the process of functioning of strategies and tactics of linguistic influence used in the discourses of the studied networks, and the subject constitutes the linguistic means of implementing these strategies and tactics. For the investigation, 365 text fragments of various content (such as entries in user chronicles, comments, replies, reposts, retweets, information on hashtags and keywords, and posts from communities) were taken from the texts of Twitter and Facebook social networks by means of a continuous sample. The results of the conducted linguistic research prove that in the social networks Twitter and Facebook, the authors of messages use different types of manipulative strategies in their posts, among which the following can be singled out as the dominant ones: strategies of persuasion, positivity, distortion of data, encouragement, self-presentation, identification and discrediting. In order to implement these strategies, addressees use numerous tactics, namely: the tactics of increasing the interlocutor’s importance, praise, exemplification, self-promotion, solidarity with the interlocutor, veiling, changing the subject, glittering generalities, stereotyping, appeal to authority, positive reinforcement, hyperbolization, appeal to emotions, plain folks, criticism, blaming, insulting comments, threatening, “friend or foe” opposition, appeals and promises.