Axiology of The Guardian’s politically correct discourse: Blackfishing as a marker of conflict-generating situations

The article considers the politically correct discourse of the British online newspaper The Guardian and the politically incorrect use of the word blackfishing in it, as well as other markers of potentially conflict-generating communicative situations (Latinx, etc.). The article suggests the axiological relativity of these conflict-generating markers associated with the key values of postmodern journalism (“anti-basics tendency”, “anti-realism”). These axiological principles are determined by the key ideological component of the newspaper under consideration: the editorial policy of The Guardian is focused on the “transparency” of collecting and providing information to the readership. In the communicative situation of a politically correct discourse, this strategic “transparency” is complicated by the use of various methods of language games with the targeted audience of The Guardian. Markers of conflict-generating communicative situations, as seen from the analysis, often work as a means of language games with the potential audience of the online newspaper. The situation of the language game is shown in the discussion of the “cosplay” transformation of Instagram models into representatives of the “black race.” The conflict-generating marker in this case is the word of the politically correct discourse blackfishing “changing one's appearance (for a woman) in such a way as to become more similar to ethnically black.” The politically correct discourse does not yet offer an adequate Russian-language equivalent of this word. The study reveals that the politically correct language is also intended to protect vulnerable or historically affected social groups. The conflict-generating communicative situation in one of the articles of The Guardian (a double interview of an Anglo-Indian writer and an Anglo-Pakistani writer) is marked with the oppositions white people - darker-skinned people /people who are not white. The vulnerability of the second group of people in the traditional British society is not questioned, but is forced through the use of such stylistic figures of speech as metaphor, hyperbole, and irony. Both writers manipulatively use personal pronouns to separate “their” people and “strangers.” The writers interviewed also try to achieve a change in the audience's assessments with the help of factography and emotional impact on readers. Thus, the ideologically oriented alignment of the “new ethics” in line with feminism, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter forces even the critically-minded authors of analytical materials of The Guardian to use markers of the politically correct language. In their texts, the main axiological attitudes of the contemporary online media discourse - its “anti-basics tendency” and “anti-realism,” manifested in the conflictgenerating communicative situations of political correctness - are implemented using a wide range of manipulative strategies to influence the readership.

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