FAKE NEWS ANALYSIS: LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC DECEPTION CUES

Yе. S. Revenko
2020 Scientific notes of Taurida National V.I. Vernadsky University, series Philology. Social Communications  
fAKe NeWS ANALYSIS: LeXIcAL AND SeMANTIc DecePTION cUeS This article is devoted to the study of the lexical and semantic features of deception in modern media space. Language is a flexible and a most important tool for communication. It provides us with the opportunity to discover the world and share beliefs and opinions. Nowadays in the era of posttruth and information war the language, being misused, can become a dangerous weapon. Thus, in recent years many techniques and tools have been
more » ... ed to reduce the spread of disinformation. Fake news detection becomes one of the key tasks not only for professional journalists and researches but also for tech giants like Google and Facebook. This research concentrates on the linguistic analysis of fake news texts as one of the most reliable methods of disinformation detection in the media space. The review of scientific sources on the research topic is presented. The concepts "post-truth" and the categories of fake news are also considered. The categories of the fake news include serious fabrications, large-scale hoaxes and humorous fakes. Using the content analysis of fake news corpus, the specific thematic focus that is characteristic of fake news is distinguished in the article. The article also includes the characteristic of fake news headlines. The predictive function of the headlines, which points at the content of the text and a phatic function, which is to attract the attention of, and establishing the first contact with any prospective reader are outlined. The studied corpus of fake news makes it possible to identify such lexical and stylistic features of fake news as the informal non-objective narrative character; the use of metaphors and stylistically marked vocabulary; an abnormality at all levels of content (thematic, informative, lexical, syntactic); the use of trigger words and hedging words; the frequent use of adjectives; an expressly ironic or sarcastic tone. It is concluded that fake news is characterized by a wider emotive space than denotative one.
doi:10.32838/2663-6069/2020.2-2/37 fatcat:2uzjmtpcl5fa3jpbutrzhhs2fi