Implicit Speech Aggression in the Texts of the Contemporary British Mass Media

Abstract

Speech aggression, which is actively used in modern media discourse, is becoming one of the tools for influencing the target audience in "information wars": the world-famous mass media use a form of implicit speech aggression to manipulate public opinion globally. Research methods include frame analysis, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, and discourse analysis with the subsequent revelation of implicit speech aggression. The research material was 150 articles on foreign and domestic policy issues, which were published in 2019–2020 in the periodicals "The Times", "The Guardian" and "The Observer". The article considers the frequency of speech aggression used in the texts of the British mass media as a means of implicit influence on the readership. According to the results of the study, there are trends in the use of implicatures that potentially express verbal aggression. These implicatures are shown to appear mainly in conflictogenic texts, which contain the materials with varying degree of hostility – from insult to verbal extremism. Such frames as "COVID-19 policy", "Post-Brexit relations with EU", "Sanctions against the political regime in Russia" are noted to prevail in the publications. The most frequent means of implicit verbal aggression realization in the leading British mass media are false accusation, sarcasm, metaphor, mockery, reproach, irony, and threat.