The aim set in this paper involves the systematisation of approaches in the field of linguistics devoted to analysing the peculiarities of linguistic manipulative influence, which determines the subject of subsequent consideration in this analytical review. The paper is the first to update the latest data in the field of the theory of linguistic manipulation, which accounts for its scientific novelty. As a result, the discussion of these approaches leads to an understanding of the direction of the evolutionary development of scientific thought in the research related to this issue, based on academic works written over the past 50 years. The paper describes various approaches, including contradictory ones, of Russian and foreign authors to the description of the prerequisites, conditions and ways of implementing linguistic manipulation, summarises the views of scholars in different fields on the interdisciplinary nature of manipulative influence. The author of the paper also notes a change in the assessment of the phenomenon of manipulation and its consequences, which is explained by the increased interest of language theorists in this problem. Special attention is paid to a large number of works of recent years in the context of studies of linguistic manipulation in different types of discourse and a forecast regarding a further vector of progress for research thought in the field under consideration is given.