Parentheses expressing (un)certainty in the Telegram media channels: word frequency

Abstract

The paper studies the frequency of epistemic parentheses (bezuslovno ‘definitely’, verojatno ‘probably’, kazhetsya ‘likely’, konechno ‘of course’, etc.) in the news issued by the official media channels in Telegram. The article analyzes the hypothesis that the excessive or rare use of such linguistic units by the media channels may reflect not only their thematic or stylistic preferences, but also their political orientation. As the statistical analysis shows, the media that “prefer” parentheses expressing certainty tend to follow the official Russian ideology. According to authors’ observations the pro-government agencies often use the parentheses of uncertainty to introduce a subjective opinion and to frame the indirect questions (proposals) and rhetorical questions. The oppositional sources, on the contrary, avoid the active use of lexical units that clearly indicate the speaker’s certainty or uncertainty in the reported fact, using other methods of speech impact.

The frequency of epistemic parentheses in the media texts can serve as a quite reliable marker, not only of the political orientation of the channel and the general content of its news, but also of the potential manipulative influence of its texts on the readers.