Modus orientation in cases of interpretation of media discourse events-attractors (a case study of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash)

The paper presents discourse analysis of discourse modalization examples revealing linguo-cognitive mechanisms and other language means of impact in the media discourse. It is advisable to assume that the ability to diversely interpret and construct alternative consequences of prominent public events, issues discussed by the world community is based on the discourse modalization. This phenomenon is understood as a process of intentional state transference, representation of the beliefs, motives, evaluations, aspiration for "infecting" the addressee so as corresponding with the wishes of the speaker. The research of the discourse modalization reveals hidden, but important factors of the media discourse realization in order to manage the process of interpreting the statements by the recipient. As an example, a situation of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 (2014) is analyzed. The discourse interpretations of the Western and Russian media on the proposed situation are deconstructed. For the analysis of the media discourse fragments from the modalization position, the discourse interpretations of the event based on news reports of the leading newspapers of Russia, the USA and Europe posted in the Internet are deconstructed. The examples show the different directions of the situation interpretation modalization in the discourse of conflict, the prevalence of the use of modal operators contributing to the modus reality construction. The emotionally loaded text creation, a certain vision of the situation setting of the addressee become possible due to the use of modal operators such as modal verbs, propositional attitude constructions, parenthetical-modal expressions, emotional and evaluative vocabulary with expressive negative connotation, conversives, dysphemism and other markers of subjectively evaluated conditions and relations. Modal load intensification of the text, mix of various lexical, grammatical and syntactical means are manipulative techniques that contribute to the loss of a rational control over the information flow of uncritically thinking addressees, redirect their vision of the situation, force to believe in the constructed scenario of the conflict, reframe the attitude to the event. Thus, when framing the situation the linguo-cognitive mechanism of positioning is activated. The opposition is established on the principle that "we are good, they are bad". The emphasis is placed technologically, and no choice of viewpoints on the event is offered to addressees, but they are invited to follow the addresser, accepting ready-made solutions. The mechanism of imagi-neering-dramatization, expressed by the using of intensifiers that increase expressiveness, helps to create a negative image, aggravating negative emotions to a fact, event, person, team, state, people, etc. It was found in the examples that the modus orientation focuses on the world from a certain position, generates a certain value content, determines the meaning of a message sent to the addressee. Consequently, modal operators help control the modus orientation of addressees, affecting the values through evaluation and discourse modalization.

Keywords

Authors

References