THE LANGUAGE OF MANIPULATION IN THE MEDIA DISCOURSE DURING THE CORONA CRISIS

Abstract

Discourse simultaneously describes and shapes our view of the world (cf. Teubert 2013: 56). Language is used as a mediator in the discourse and it shapes our social, political and cultural interactions (cf. Baker 2008: 3). There is no such thing as a pure, impartial statement. Expressing thoughts and ideas involves purposes, goals, and desires at the same time; it is not only what is said that matters, but also the way it is said (cf. Sornig 1989: 95). Language is used as an instrument to exercise one's will (cf. Nölke 2010: 22) and its main function is to influence someone (cf. Nölke 2010: 110).
The emphasis of this research is on the forms of manipulation during the corona crisis in Croatia and Germany. The research corpus consists of newspaper articles from Večernji list and Der Spiegel published in March and April 2020. Examples of direct allegations by epidemiologists, politicians, and other people affected by the corona virus are analyzed.
Manipulation is explored in the corpus according to the strategies of Van Dijk (2006), who, as a starting point, distinguishes general interaction strategies, i.e. positive portrayal of self (we) and negative portrayal of others (they). In the Croatian corpus 315 articles with the topic of the corona virus were found, out of which 85 employed manipulation. In the German corpus 1974 articles were found, out of which 199 employed manipulation. Although the number of articles is disproportionate, it can be concluded that the presence of manipulation is higher in the Croatian (26.98%) than in the German corpus (10.08%). In the Croatian corpus they are more often shown as negative, while in the German corpus there is a greater emphasis on our positive sides. Furthermore, the contrast between the positive sides of us and the negative sides of them is more frequent in the Croatian corpus.