Speech Manipulation as a Component of Speech Influence: Reflections on the Status of a Communicative Phenomenon

Abstract

The article describes the phenomenon of speech manipulation as a tool for managing speech communications. The research is conducted in the context of the philological theory of communication; the phenomenon of manipulation is investigated within the argumentative discourse. The research material is based on the materials of the authors' forensic expertise, in particular, demotivating posters containing nationalist ideas prohibited for public expression by the legislation of the Russian Federation. The public media nature of speech actions falling under the Criminal Code, which requires special caution from the authors of these statements, allows us to classify the processes under study as covert communication. The analysis of denotative-significative, evaluative, motivational-target plans of texts reveals manipulative strategies, the mechanisms of which are aimed at implicating the most important components of the expressed meaning and lowering the critical threshold of their perception by the recipient. In particular, the strategy of deverbalizing the obligatory meanings of the utterance and the strategy of shifting the point of view are highlighted.