The role of language means in exerting a manipulative impact on the audience (on the example of BBC radio text)

Abstract

The article touches upon the concept of manipulation, its basic characteristics, and its role in the modern informational society. The authors point out that alongside the informational function, media texts carry out the pragmatic function, namely, they manipulate the public opinion. According to the authors, manipulation is a more negative than positive phenomenon. Besides, there is a definition of radiotext and some considerations concerning its specific features as compared to other types of mediatexts, namely, wide audience, no video, but only audio, etcetera. British Broadcasting Corporation radiotexts have been chosen by the authors as the object of analysis. The authors have considered some historical aspects that determine the manipulative character of radio news. Also, special attention is paid to their structural and linguistic (grammatical, lexical, prosodic) features which are aimed at forming listeners’ opinion about current events. A number of examples from radiotexts are given and their analysis is conducted. The authors state that alongside the text structure and the choice of material itself much attention should be paid to linguistic means, among which prosody is of the greatest importance. Such elements of prosody as tempo, loudness, the use of various tones in final and non-final prosodic groups and the speaker’s timber influence the audience view of the world and draw the listeners’ attention to particular aspects. At the end of the article the authors make a conclusion that taking into consideration the specific features of radiotexts, linguistic, mainly prosodic means play the leading role in the process of manipulation.