Axiological conflict as a potential trigger for the discourse practice of cancel culture (based on the updated dictionary entries “woman” / “man” in the Cambridge Dictionary (2022))

Abstract

The study aims to identify a potential trigger for the discourse practice of cancel culture in the context of supplementing/redefining/correcting the meaning of linguistic units, changing their evaluative qualification. The paper considers the change in the value components of the notional content as a result of updating the dictionary entries of the words “woman” / “man”. Based on the discourse analysis of the article “Biden admin agencies refuse to answer, What is a woman?”, the researcher examines a set of communicative means used by the author of the article to achieve communicative intention, as well as the communicative behaviour, tactics and strategies of government agencies of American linguistic culture in the zone of communicative risk. The study is novel in that it is the first to consider the discourse practice of cancel culture within the framework of axiological linguistics. As a result of the study, the implicit possibility of activating public censure in the media sphere due to an axiological conflict has been established and the communicative strategies and tactics of avoiding the communicative situation of cancel culture have been identified.