EMOTIONAL AND EVALUATIVE VOCABULARY IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE UNDER CONTEMPORARY INFORMATION WAR

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of emotional and evaluative vocabulary used in the global public political discourse under contemporary information warfare to control public opinion, to shape the image of the enemy and to conceal the unpleasant truth. Traditional lexical means, such as euphemisms and dysphemisms, are widely used in modern political discourse to achieve these goals. But there are some dangerous trends: a significant decrease in the reliability of information in the media, the dissemination of unproved and fake news; use of euphemisms not for amelioration of meaning, but for its falsification; especially frequent use of dysphemisms in order to expose Russia as an evil enemy. In combination with the dominance of the US mass media in the global information space, this political discourse is misleading world public opinion. Public disclosure of these lexical manipulations can be one of the means of protection against information warfare.

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About this article

Publication history

• Published: November 1, 2017.

Keywords

• политический дискурс
• информационная война
• образ врага
• эвфемизм
• дисфемизм
• political discourse
• information war
• image of enemy
• euphemism
• dysphemism

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© 2017 The Author(s)
© 2017 Gramota Publishing, LLC

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)