CC BY
15DOI: https://doi.org/10.46991/AFA/2022.18.2.025
MEDIA-POLITICAL DISCOURSE FROM A TEXTOLOGICAL
VIEWPOINT
Rafayel Harutyunyan*
Yerevan State University
There are different research methods, techniques and strategies that are used to study the text. One of such methods is the method of textual analysis, a variety of study approaches used to analyze and comprehend a piece of writing. Understanding media-political texts and avoiding manipulation and information bias requires not only linguistic and extra-linguistic competence, but also awareness of different strategies.
In the present paper, we are aimed to provide an overview of textual analysis as a research tool for studying incidents of manipulation in media news broadcasts from a textological perspective.
Keywords: manipulation, media discourse, political discourse, textual analysis, manipulative strategies and techniques, linguistic and extra-linguistic means.
Introduction
Nowadays, media produces complicated messages, abundant with colloquial phrases, vulgar words, figurative language, images, font designs and layouts that give an additional emotional and expressive coloring to the text. In this environment, the problem consists in the difficulty of reading, understanding and analyzing media articles, which requires essential skills and knowledge.
In spite of the best advantage of the social media as the main source of information with diverse availabilities, being in agreement with the decision, we should note that media contents are sometimes designed to trigger our emotions, arouse feelings, affect, propagate, manipulate, etc. This is borne out by the fact that all media content makes use of rhetorical devices to convince readers of its 'truthfulness', and against the background of this, skilled communicators, in this case journalists, draw on a 'toolkit' of such devices
* rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com Received: 22.03.2022
Revised: 18.04.2022 Accepted: 30.04.2022
[fcc^ CD © 1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. © The Author(s) 2021
consisting of four basic kinds of tools: style, lexical and grammatical choices, tropes and figurative language, meta-discursive choices (Jones et al., 2020, p. 115).
There are particular reasons why multimodal persuasion of social media is of paramount importance, as it occasionally employs several modes, including pictures, voice, music, videos and so on, and interestingly enough, images have the potential to convince people successfully, since they communicate in a more direct and immediate way, as we look first, then read, interpret, etc. (p. 119).
It may be suggested, that while reading social media articles, we believe the transmitted information to be true if the language is persuasive. In this regard, it is strongly suggested to consider certain meta-discursive devices such as agenda setting, framing and intertextuality. Turning into a brief consideration of the mentioned meta-discursive devices, we should by all means start with the agenda setting, which refers to the power of media to influence public opinion via the selection of the topics. The process, through which media producers contextualize their messages is known as framing. It is usually assumed that in social media, intertextuality, or borrowing other people's words, linguistic patterns, copying general structures or styles are frequently employed to make the speech as persuasive as possible (Jones et al., 2020, pp. 118-119).
If we want to peruse the best the manipulative nature of media-political articles from a textological standpoint, the advantage of the method of textual analysis cannot be overestimated. As a rule, textual analysis is not confined to defining the structure of the work only, but also reveals possible interpretations a text may have.
According to McKee, "whenever an interpretation of something's meaning - a book, television program, film, magazine, etc. is produced, we treat it as a text". A text is something that we make meaning from (Mckee, 2003, p. 4). It is worth mentioning, that textual analysis can be carried out differently, according to Mckee, because of the differences that may impact the sense-making, such as differences in cultures, value judgments, the existence of the obstruct things, relationships between things, and after all, differences in reason and thinking. The author claims that textual analysis is an attempt to obtain knowledge and information about sense-making practices, not just only in cultures and nations totally different from our own, but also within the scope of our own culture (Mckee, 2003, p. 14).
We have now to trace on another scholar's, Belsey's, approach, who claims there is nothing like 'pure' reading, for interpretation is impossible without the involvement of extra-textual knowledge, generally of cultural nature (Belsey, 2013, p. 160).
Among other approaches to the study of textual analysis, the consideration of other scholars, such as Frey et al, may serve as a good example, stemming from the fact, that this type of analysis presupposes the employment by communication researchers of a technique aimed at characterizing and understanding the basic features of a recorded or visual message. A special significance is attached to the purpose of textual analysis, which is to describe the content, structure, and functions of the textual communications. It also requires crucial considerations such as identifying the categories of texts meant to be studied, collecting relevant texts, and the preference of the technique to be used in evaluating them (Frey et al., 1999).
Observation of different theories and approaches to the study of the concept of textual analysis enables us to primarily conclude that the ascertained facts are in favor of giving rise to thought, and that the method of textual analysis will ensure reliable results in our study of media-political manipulation on the textological level. It will help us find out all those linguistic means and strategies, as well as extra-linguistic factors that are used in the media to bring upon alternative meanings and interpretations, thus manipulating the reader.
Textual analysis of media-political news articles
On November 20, 2015 an article was published anonymously in Azerbaijani online news platform "Azvision.az", having the headline "Armenian So-Called Genocide" (Azvison.az, 2015).
Taking into consideration certain extra-linguistic factors such as who the author is, where it is published and what the purpose of the publication is, we cannot rule out evident cases of manipulation. In the above-mentioned headline, for example, the author's initiative of demonstrating and proving that the Armenian Genocide is "So-Called" is quite visible. Hence, the choice of placing this adjective in the headline is not accidental, as it highlights the meaning "you do not think that the word or phrase that is being used to describe someone or something is appropriate " ("so-called", n.d.). As of now, the anonymous author's intention to persuade the readers that Armenians have been misleading and deceiving people worldwide, blaming and denouncing Turks for such a crime, is obvious.
The article is full of signs of psychological and linguistic manipulation. To clarify the point, let us observe the following passage:
When armenian organizations instigated Armenians to revolt during World War I (1914-1918) against the Ottoman Government, their intention was to exterminate the Turks and to create an independent armenian state in eastern Anatolia where armenians were only about 15% of the total population.
In the given passage, the manipulative strategies of manipulation of facts1 and overwhelming the target with facts and statistics 2 are obvious, since according to the historical records, Armenians have been living in their homeland, i.e., Western Armenia (Morgenthau, 1974; Zulalyan, 1995; Melkonyan, 2001, etc.). Paying attention to the occurrences of the lowercase for the words and expressions such as "armenia", "armenians", "independent armenian state ", which are actual mistakes according to the English grammar rules for the proper nouns, on the contrary, considering other usages of proper nous, such as "World War I", "Ottoman Government", "Turks" which, as in reason, are capitalized, is an absolute proof, that this kind of approach is a deliberate misspelling, apparently to display contempt, disgrace towards Armenians, rather than a technical and grammatical mistake (See about it also in Gasparyan & Hayrapetyan, 2020).
It is abundantly clear, that the author's biased and hostile attitude is unquestionable, since the article comprises the list of manipulative techniques and tactics such as denial, lying, falsifying the facts, the purpose of which is the negative-other presentation3 (Armenians) and positive-self presentation4 (Turks). To verify, let us observe the next passage:
Entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate the whole Turkish people of the region to the last man, woman and child. Armenian revolters tortured and massacred large numbers of defenseless civilians. To assemble innocent civilians in the mosques and burn them in the building was one of their methods. Even today the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of these armenian crimes. It must be pointed out that there is no historic position foilikening the annihilation of minority
groups under Hitler and the Third Reich to the revolt of the Armenians against the Ottoman Government in 1915.
It is worth noting that there is an obvious case of exaggeration (overstatement) throughout the passage, as expressed by words and phrases such as "exterminate " meaning "to destroy or kill completely" according to the Britannica Dictionary ("exterminate", n.d.), "beyond belief", "subjected to violence ", "burn in the buildings " etc., meanwhile, in the opening statement of the article, regarding "Armenian organizations instigating revolt against Ottoman Government", Armenians account for barely 15% of the overall population, and for various reasons, we can see inconsistency and contradiction of the facts and ideas expressed in the text, since with that little amount it would practically be impossible to totally destroy all the people of a nation like the Ottoman Empire .
Of special interest is the following sentence "Entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate the whole Turkish people of the region to the last man, woman and child" where we can observe enumeration, a stylistic device, where people are named one by one to form a chain, (Galperin, 1977, p. 216), the purpose of which is to propagate that "Armenians were ready to kill everyone with no exception". In the same sentence, one may also notice the use of anadiplosis, another literary device in the subsequent part "Entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate... " where the author, repeating the last word of one phrase at the beginning of the next clause, tries to achieve a special impact, (Gasparyan & Matevosyan, 2011: 140), in this case to emphasize "the bad nature of Armenians".
Constantly and dishonestly blaming Armenians for the Genocide of Turks, the author suggests the following arguments:
• First of all, the Armenians were in armed revolt against the Ottoman Government. The Jews, Wenns and others of Hitler's Germany were not.
• Secondly, the Allies actually promised the Armenians nothing for their revolt, except some amorphic phrases from the British [...].
• Thirdly, that anyone has to die is regrettable, but history is unfortunately full of examples of similar events, and it is
obvious that the responsibles of the innocent Turkish, and Armenian victims of the Armenian revolts are the Leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Organizations who incited, armenians to revolt against legal Ottoman Government.
In the passages mentioned above the author seems to be guided by the structure of writing an essay, where using the words "first of all", "secondly", "thirdly " he/she tries to show the readers reasonable argumentations to make his/her statements verifiable. In the first example, the author mentions that "the Armenians were in armed revolt against the Ottoman Government", while "The Jews, Wenns and others of Hitler's Germany were not". Through an implied comparison, expressed by a compound sentence, the author applies the manipulative strategy of guilt baiting 5, where we can observe a case of hidden conditionality, hypothetically alluding that "if you were not armed you would not be ... like the Jews, Wenns, etc., and the phrase "others of Hitler's Germany".
Considering the next sentence "that anyone has to die is regrettable, but history is unfortunately full of examples of similar events... " the author uses an ethical code to inhance an emotional state, and fact that the vocabulary used in the whole article, more specifically the adjectives, such as "so-called", "armed", "seldom-free", nouns and phrases "violence", "beyond belief", "torture and massacre", "Armenian crimes", "responsibility" etc., used to describe Armenians, makes the speech too dramatic, meanwhile such choice of words and phrases as "innocent Turks", "defenseless civilians", "legal Ottoman Government", "internecine battle with invaders", etc. used to describe Turks is to make the audience, unaware of the history and the Genocide "believe" and "understand" how "evil" and "bad" Armenians are, and how "brave" and "heroic" Turks are.
The cases of manipulation and manipulative intention of the anonymous author can be noticed in the given paragraph too:
The Armenian historians and instigators exciting young people's minds publish much on the genocide. And with every decade a number of "the murdered" increases in the geometric progression. Manipulation of figures, rough misrepresentation of historical facts — it is a principal weapon of the Armenian falsificators whom as long ago as the beginning of the century unmasked above-mentioned Ilya
Chavchavadze in his book "The Armenian scientists and screaming stones ".
Our consideration of the paragraph, aimed to inform people about "truth", reveals the necessity of logic, facts and verifiable sources, whereas the author uses figurative language instead, (e.g., metaphoric conceptualizations such as "a number of 'the murdered' increases in the geometric progression", "manipulation of figures, rough misrepresentation of historical facts - it is a principal weapon of the Armenian falsificators... ") trying to divert the attention of the readers from the actual truth and forcing the majority of them into an emotional state to condemn Armenians for the "unpardonable actions of the latter".
The fact, that the author's claims about the Genocide are illogical, is realized in every paragraph of the article. Even though, the article might seem to sound realistic for the masses of people who do not have enough or any information about the historical tragedy, however we encounter lack of valid evidence and logic (logos) regarding "the Armenian historians and instigators", whose numbers are increasing, as the author mentions, in "geometric progression".
It may be as well to say, at the outset, that not only the language of the article is of manipulative nature, but also some design features, such as image, layout, font size, etc., contribute to the achievement of the psychological pressure and affect people. The point mentioned above can be illustrated by the following image, taken from the article:
To make several allusions on the textual components of the image, we can object to analysis the following two sentences "PROTEST ARMENIAN LIES" and "Armenian Genocide is an Imperialist Lie!" Visually, the first sentence is UPPERCASE, while the second one is Capitalize Each Word. Thus, we can assume that the author's primary focus and purpose is the word "protest", "strong complaint expressing disagreement, disapproval, or opposition" ("protest", n.d.). Proceeding with the analysis, we can also notice that the words "lie " and "Armenian" are repeated twice in the picture, and the Turkish flag appears as well. Briefly accounting for those elements, we can say that the
author of the article anonymously makes an allegation without evidence and facts, and the use of the syntactic stylistic device of repetition, is a manipulative strategy, in the sense, that the readers unaware of the history and the truth subconsciously can accept all those subsequent texts and allegations attributed to Armenians as reality. Taking into account that the author is from Azerbaijan and considering the inclusion of the Turkish flag only, we can indicate the author's biased and prejudiced attitude.
Another element that holds the interest of the reader in the image is the aggression accentuated by red and black colors. A detail emphasizing the aggression is the line under the eye typical of the leopard and other predators. Normally, the persona fighting against lies does not look like this. The hairstyle of the character, which is more emphasized due to red spots is typical of French women, and perhaps the character is a reference to a famous Joan of Arc, who symbolizes the fight for justice, and in this sense, readers may trust the character.
Finally, paying attention to the Turkish flag, which is tilted to the right, shows that Turkey is represented here as the victim. But even if we follow the logic and disregard historical past, it is an obvious case that Turkey cannot be a victim of a state whose not only present area is many times smaller than its own, but also population, army, economy, etc.
Another news article for a clear understanding of the manipulative nature of media-political news articles from a textual point of view is the following, headlined "IF DONALD TRUMP ISN'T SH--TING HIS PANTS OVER TODAY'S JANUARY 6 HEARING, HE PROBABLY SHOULD BE" (Levin, 2022).
One of the interesting features in the headline of the news report is the use of the idiom "shit one's pants" meaning "to become so afraid, surprised, worried, etc., that one defecates" according to Merriam Webster. The next point to be made is that the expression has informal usages and is offensive ("shit one's pants", n.d.). We must make a further point about the choice of the journalist regarding the spelling of the word "sh--ting", so what we are mainly concerned with what is the purpose of writing "sh--t", if everyone knows the actual meaning of the word. But however reasonable it may be to say that though the journalist is unrestricted enough to use an expletive, and she feels uncomfortable using the word in its full term, nevertheless, we are inclined to think that this is an attention-grabbing approach considering several linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, e.g., who the article is about, if-clause in the headline, etc.
Considering the syntactic report: if donald trump isn't sh-ting his pants over
today's january 6 hearing, he probably should be
aspect or the headline we may note a conditional sentence expressed by an if-clause + present continuous (isn't sh--ing), and a modal verb in the main clause (should be). Notably, sentences of this structure are used to make suggestions and give advice (Collins, n.d.). However, it seems essential to emphasize, that the headline is incomplete in form. It would have been grammatically more correct to have: "If Donald" Trump isn't sh--ting his pants over today's January 6 hearing, he probably should" rather than "should be" since the latter presupposes continuation. Considering the grammatical meaning of the conditional sentence in the headline and its connotational meaning we can state that it is not a piece of advice, but an ironic or even a sarcastic remark. The manipulative intention of the author can also be observed in the image attached to the news report. When looking at the picture, the first thing one may notice is uncertainty, ambiguity, etc., and it seems that there is no trust and confidence on the face of the character (Donald Trump) in the picture. The impression is that Donald Trump is in such a situation that he does not know what to do, and he is in such a place that he would not prefer to be. We are inclined to believe, that by this choice, the journalist appears to be attempting to bring her chosen headline to life, though this kind of facial expression is likely to appear on a person's face during different types of interactions. This does not mean at all a person is scared. The chosen picture is taken in such a way, as to devaluate the person in the eyes of the reader. It is worth mentioning, that the picture was taken during another event: (WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 13: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden at the White House on November 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. This is the first time President Trump has spoken since the election night last week, as COVID-19 infections surge in the United States. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)).
To get a new angle on something, we are to note that Donald Trump is more inclined to be disliked and hated by the Americans not only for his political viewpoints, but also because of his personality and character, for being
arrogant, bad tempered, disrespectful, verbally aggressive, etc. And for being so, he has gained a lot more hatred and rumors around his personality, that is why, appearing in the center of media articles, brings more public reaches and click-baits to the journalists, who, most often use this opportunity for propaganda. Of such nature is the news article, headlined "Trump Hates You ... Even If You Love Him" (Cohen, 2020), where David Cohen, the journalist, is in interaction with Donald Trump's supporters, and this is realized by the use of second person singular/plural personal pronoun "You" that refers to any supporter in general, based on the context of the article.
If we put our central emphasis on the headline, we can notice the use of a conditional sentence with the main clause "Trump Hates You" and a subordinate clause "Even If You Love Him". It should be added in this connection that the syntax of conditional sentences presupposes no punctuation mark, if the main clause is before the subordinate clause. Interestingly enough, the journalist seems to have separated the constituent parts of the headline by the punctuation mark "ellipsis", made up to indicate a pause. The purpose of the pause is not only to stress the word "hate" expressing the feeling, which, according to the author, Donald Trump has towards people, but also emphasize the unreal situation, the speculation that "no matter how much you love him, still, he hates you". Added to this, the headline is Capitalize Each Word, aimed to express emphasis through each word. Those capitalized words, not only convey original message, but also make the readers believe that the alerted information is something of great importance. Of special interest is the subject - predicate correlation in "Trump Hates" and "You Love", which both expresses a hypothetical situation with a consequence in a conditional sentence, and has a stylistic and emotive signification expressed through an oxymoron, a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings.
The fact that the purpose of the journalist is propaganda is obvious, since he uses a language to persuade and manipulate on the emotional level, rather than rational. To make our claims more justified, let us observe the following passage, which is the opening statement of the news article:
A simple message to President Trump's supporters: He doesn't like you. In fact, you disgust him. Well, not all of you. The rich and powerful, he likes. If you're on TV on a regular basis, your net worth is at least eight figures, or you live in a glitzy zip code, he likes you. He fawns over those supporters and wants to be their friend.
The rest of you though, especially those who live in rural areas or have no college degree — let's face it, he hates you.
The first thing we notice is that the author has used entrusted narrative 6 to make his statements more credible and convincing to the reader. The repetition of the synonymic sentences of the same semantic field such as "he doesn't like you", "you disgust him", "he hates you" is not only a syntactic stylistic device that secures a special emphasis, but also manifests a gradual increase in the semantic significance or emotional tension, which as a figure of speech is climax. For various reasons we can conclude, that the author has a manipulative intention to portray Donald Trump disgracefully and devalue him in his supporters' sight. This is the reason why he attempts to influence morally which is displayed in the following sentence "The rich and powerful, he likes". Grammatically, the sentence does not follow the canonical order of the typical English sentence (subject, predicate, etc.). By linguistic inversion the journalist has structured the way that direct object "The rich and powerful" has come to the fore to make an additional emphasis and give a special effect, dramatic purpose or formality. Added to this, using a lyrical tactic-pathos, the author refers to the readers emotions through such an argumentation that Donald Trump loves those who "live in a glitzy zip code ", "have net worth at least eight figures", etc. The choice of the phrasal verb "fawns over" meaning "to praise someone too much and give him/her a lot of attention that is not sincere, in order to get a positive reaction" ("fawn over", n.d.) is to verify whatever the author has transmitted to be true. Finally, the expression "simple message" in the passage adduced above is not simple at all, but rather complicated and serious, moreover it contains instances of irony.
Turning to the consideration of the next example, headlined "Where's Boris? Johnson missing in action at Biden's climate summit" (Mathiesen, Webber, 2022), it becomes apparent that the headline consists of two types of sentences: interrogative "Where's Boris?", and declarative "Johnson missing in action at Biden's climate summit". The consideration of the constituent parts of the headline makes it visible the use of the linguistic economy principle, expressed by the contracted form of the conjunction "where" and the present tense form "is" of the auxiliary verb to be in the first sentence "Where's Boris", as well as the omission of the auxiliary verb to be in the second sentence "Johnson missing". Interestingly enough, we may notice that the Prime Minister of the UK has been referred to by his first name "Boris", in the first sentence, and last name "Johnson", in the second one, which, to our firm
belief, is not accidental, since the journalists also mention about the president of the USA "Biden's climate summit". In this kind of organization of the headline, mockery can be observed for it is not ordinary to address the Prime Minister of the UK by his first name (Where's Boris), particularly, that the president of the USA has been addressed by his last name in the same headline. However, the journalists have succeeded in vailing the direct mockery by starting the next sentence in the headline with the second name of the Prime Minister (Johnson missing in action [...]). Thus, one thing is clear, the journalists have disguised their manipulative intention trying not to disclose their biased attitude. From the first glance," Where 's Boris" in the headline seems to be a simple question, but it seems essential to emphasize that contracted forms are used in casual writings, which in spite of being common in news writing, are largely conditioned by how formal the writing and the audience are. As far as the text of the article is concerned, it is rather formal than casual, which becomes clear from the sentences, adduced below:
The U.K. prime minister will not be attending a high-level meeting of world leaders convened by U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday to discuss the climate crisis, despite British claims to be leading global efforts.
According to an agenda seen by POLITICO, the attendance list for the online meeting includes 17 heads of state and government.
The White House said in a statement the Major Economies Forum would advance Biden's "efforts to use all levers to tackle the global climate crisis, urgently address rising costs around the world exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine, and put the U.S. and allies on a path to long-term energy and food security. (Mathiesen, Webber 2022)
Hand in hand with some other manipulation related elements in the news article, we can proceed with the analysis of the following sentence "Boris Johnson finally found a party he won't attend", as well as the image attached to the article.
It would be true however to suppose, that the sentence has sarcastically been used with the intention to indirectly mock Boris Johnson, as the article is
not about a party, but an online meeting of the world leaders organized by Joe Biden:
The U.K. prime minister will not be attending a high-level meeting of world leaders convened by U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday to discuss the climate crisis, despite British claims to be leading global efforts... According to an agenda seen by POLITICO, the attendance list for the online meeting includes 17 heads of state and government. (Mathiesen, Webber 2022)
Applying the research method of the textual analysis to the perception of the image as a text, we can notice that the beer is the first item standing out in the picture. When compared to the character's job clothing, it may appear that he is simply having fun in a bar rather than working. If his tie, shirt buttons, and sleeves were undone, the impression would be typical, that the man had finished the work and went to rest, which is not unusual, but we see the opposite picture. As noticed in the picture, the cup is raised which is an indication to someone else's toast.
Among other things, there is also a faint blush on his face, perhaps not from the first glass, for the cup in his hand is full, and it shows he has not sipped yet. The blush on his face is probably because of nervousness and anxiety, or any other sensations that could have brought him to the situation conditioned by the latter political events in the UK leading him to resign. Added to this, if someone sees the picture of this man for the first time, he/she could probably think that he was so drunk that he did not even look at his hairstyle, despite the fact, that Boris Johnson is typically seen with a similar hairstyle.
Concentrating on the choice and arrangements of the words in the headline, and the intention of the journalist to choose such an image for the news article we can state that a direct mockery is expressed in the sentence "Where's Boris ", which becomes clearer after reading the news item. We also detect another literary device - satire in the headline, with the help of which readers are affected by the criticism.
Conclusion
Putting the knowledge of the textual analysis to use, we conclude that one of the advantages of this method consists in its applicability to good use when analyzing media-political articles with the perspective of detecting the cases of manipulation quite easily. On the basis of the textual analysis of the chosen sources of data we come to the conclusion that the method of this kind is very useful as a model of text analysis since its accurate usage avails of the possibility of showing evident cases of linguistic manipulation in different layers of the language, such as grammar and vocabulary. We may come to the conclusion that the study of media-political discourse from a textological viewpoint enables us to support the idea that manipulation is largely conditioned by the semiotic aspect of the language too, since whatever cannot be expressed directly through the texts, can be unfolded in other manipulation related elements, such as pictures, style of the headlines, sounds, etc., which can easily manipulate the audience on the visual level, thus affecting the psychology of people, making them read and believe the message.
Notes
1. Manipulation of facts is a tactic, that is widely used in media-political language. It includes lying, excuse-making, being two-faced, blaming the victim for causing their own victimization, etc. (Ni, 2015, see about it also in Gasparyan & Harutyunyan, 2021).
2. Overwhelming the target with facts and statistics also known as "intellectual bullying" happens in many areas of life. By imposing alleged facts, statistics, and other data manipulators try to presume power over others, the latter, being unaware of the situation (Ni, 2015, see about it also in Gasparyan & Harutyunyan, 2021).
3. Negative other-presentation is a manipulative strategy used by people to talk to others trying to humiliate and undermine them (Dijk 2006: 373).
4. Positive self-presentation is a strategy used by people to talk about themselves using a positive language to gain the compassion of the audience (Dijk 2006: 373).
5. Guilt-Baiting is a strategy often used to hold someone else accountable for his/her pleasure, success, or failings. The manipulator coerces the target into granting unreasonable requests and demands by using the emotional vulnerabilities and susceptibility of the latter through guilt baiting which the
manipulator believes to be more rational and effective than straightforward blaming (Ni, 2015, see about it also in Gasparyan & Harutyunyan, 2021).
6. Entrusted narratives are can be used when the authors want to make their writing more plausible, and impressive, more impactful to the reader using the effect of authenticity of the described events. The narrator is not overtly claim responsible for the views and evaluation but the manner of presentation, the angle of description very strongly suggest that the story is told not by the author himself but by some of his factotums (Gasparian, Matevosian 2011: 144-145).
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Sources of Data
Armenian So-Called Genocide. (2015). Azvison.az. Retrieved June 22, 2022. Cohen, D. (2020). Trump hates you ... Even if you love him. RollingStone.
Retrieved June 18, 2022 Levin, B. (2022). Report: If Donald Trump isn't sh--ting his pants over today's January 6 hearing, He probably should be. VANITYFAIR. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
Mathiesen, K., Webber, E. (2022). Where's Boris? Johnson missing in action at
Biden's climate summit. POLITICO. Retrieved June 19, 2022. What are conditional clauses in English? - Easy learning grammar. COLLINS. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Exterminate (n.d.). In The Britannica Dictionary. Retrieved June 22, 2022. Fawn over. (n.d.) In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved June 20, 2022. Protest (n.d.). In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved June 29, 2022. Shit one's pants. (n.d.). In Merriam Webster Dictionary. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
So-called (n.d.). In Oxford Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
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