The paper attempts to describe a number of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of modeling the anti-Russian discourse in the English language media headlines. The authors focus on the coverage of the Skripal poisoning case and the specific language means employed by a range of English-language news sources, such as The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Politico, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, The New Zealand Herald, The Herald. The results of the study indicate that one of the most effective and widespread media manipulation techniques is misinformation accompanied by a discrepancy between the headline and the content of the article. The research seeks to classify manipulation techniques according to the way of their actualization in the language and the degree of misinformation: full fabrication, partial fabrication, manipulated content, selective quoting, false connection, emphasizing communication relevant elements by means of the actual division of the sentence. The implementation of such manipulation techniques is aimed at shaping public opinion on the incident at issue in order to promote a negative image of Russia and its leader in terms of their alleged involvement in the Skripal attack.
Phenobarbital Poisoning Case: Was It Preventable?
