Questions with parentheses expressing uncertainty in the Telegram media channels. An instrument of manipulation

Abstract

The news published by Telegram channels contain questions with parentheses expressing some degree of uncertainty (vidimo ‘apparently’, navernoe ‘probably’, vozmozhno ‘perhaps, maybe’, etc.), cf. Mozhet, pora dogovarivatjsja? ‘Maybe it’s time to negotiate?’ Mostly, such questions are hypothesis or directive speech acts. In the many of such questions potentially manipulative speech acts are identified (rhetorical questions, reproaches, absurd hypotheses and absurd suggestions), which aim to make the addressee think of a person or his/her actions in a certain way. It is stated that different parentheses occur in different types of questions with unequal frequency: for the words vozmozhno and mozhet hypotheses are the most typical, for the collocation mozhet bytj – directive speech acts, and the word vidimo – manipulative speech acts. An analysis of the total number of questions with parentheses posed by different media suggests the conclusion that some media avoid such questions in editorial texts, while others tend to ask questions themselves more often than just to cite them. Finally, it was found that different channels “prefer” different types of questions with parentheses: more often than other media, “Moskovskij Komsomolets” uses hypotheses, “Vzglyad” and “Komsomolskaya Pravda” use suggestions, and “Tsargrad” and “Russia Today” use absurd statements, rhetorical questions and reproaches.