Identification Linguistic Markers of Alarmism in Mediadiscourse

Abstract

This article is devoted to the linguistic study of the phenomenon of alarmism in the media discourse. The influencing, informing and entertaining functions of the mass media determine that the modern news environment largely makes people to read and consume negative news (the phenomenon of mind scrolling). The objectives of the research include clarifying the concept of «alarmism», the study of techniques, and linguistic means of actualizing panic. We analyzed the articles of online publications «Gazeta.Ru», «Kommersant», «Parliamentary Newspaper» using the continuous sampling method. The study found the connection between alarmism and the emotions of anxiety and panic, as well as the fact that these concepts are included in the circle of oppositions of the rational-logical mode of information perception. The authors relied on the existing scientific research illustrating the linguistic possibilities in the transmission of the semantics of anxiety and fear. These include the category of intensity of language units, which is implemented at the lexical and grammatical levels. Conclusions about the speech-acting potential of tropes and figures of speech were taken into account, which can be analyzed within the framework of expressive syntax. The conducted research made it possible to identify linguistic markers of alarmism in the form of lexemes related to a certain thematic area of alarmist agendas. The most frequent are environmental, economic, pandemic topics, as well as lexemes belonging to these topics, explicating fear, threats, impending disasters. Markers at the syntactic level are represented by figures of speech in the form of antithesis and hyperbole.