Comparison as a means of persuasion and a technique of manipulation: features of application in media space

Abstract

Manipulative techniques of verbal communication have rather recently moved into the focus of research attention (classical rhetoric was focused on honest argumentation and touched upon the problem of manipulation only in terms of criticism of “unsuitable persuasion techniques” used by sophists). In numerous modern studies, virtually the entire tropic is considered to be manipulative techniques, and it remains unclear what transforms the method of enhancing figurativeness and expressiveness into a destructive method of latent influence. Of course, this ambiguity is generated by the essence of the object: to explain manipulativeness, it is necessary to dive into the spheres of the intentional, which is difficult to verify. However, it is extremely important to distinguish between the tropics in its original role, on the one hand, and tropics used for manipulative purposes, on the other. Based on discursive analysis, which makes it possible to identify manipulation, using the inductive-deductive method and the method of linguopragmatic analysis, the authors study the conditions under which the use of linguistic means in general and the comparison trope in particular becomes manipulative. On the example of the trope comparison the authors attempt to clarify the conditions of its incorrect, it means manipulative, use. Manipulation is destructive, even if it bases on the tropics, and therefore for the cultivation of public space it is necessary to detect this technique.

Keywords

• verbal manipulation
• persuasion
• tropes
• figures of speech
• comparison