IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DISCREDITING STRATEGY IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MEDIA DISCOURSE BASED ON THE COVERAGE OF THE RUSSIAN VACCINE SPUTNIK V

Abstract

The article analyzes the strategy of discrediting the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in the Western mass media. This strategy is one of the key ones in political discourse due to its agonality. The discrediting strategy is aimed at forming a steady negative image of the Russian vaccine among the mass addressee. The discrediting of the Sputnik vaccine is realized through the use of the following speech tactics: the tactics of accusation, polarization, creating an image of the enemy, labeling, appealing to the opinion of authoritative sources. The headings and headline complexes affect the perception of the text of the article and the formation of its negative assessment. It is stressed that language tropes are important, such as metaphor, epithet, comparison, irony (sarcasm), rhetorical questions, as well as emotive vocabulary with negative evaluation and lexical units with negative connotation. Negative evaluativeness is expressed explicitly. The analysis of speech tactics shows that the coverage of this topic is politicized. The main distrust of the Sputnik V vaccine is determined by the general atmosphere of hostility to the Russian authorities which results in doubt about the effectiveness of the vaccine.