Information and Psychological War Linguistics as a Research Project at the Siberian Federal University: Problems and Achievements

Abstract

The article discusses essential scientific problems within the scope of a young discipline “Information and Psychological War Linguistics” (IPW). These problems are based both on the analytical review of the scientific literature and on the authors’ observations. The following most significant problems of the IPW are defined: definition of the Information and Psychological War; classifications of its aims and objectives that, as a rule, are implicit in the war discourse; relationship between the object and targets of the IPW; hierarchy of targets; definition and systematization of criteria which might be used in order to identify the IPW texts; methodology of these texts analysis; determination of the IPW genre specifics; and classification of its speech strategies and tactics. The paper clarifies the definitions of some terms: Information and Psychological War, Information and Psychological War Linguistics, the object and the target. The following criteria for identifying IPW texts are distinguished: 1) the public character of the text as a focus on the mass addressee’s consciousness; 2) the inclusion of the text in one or another ideological discourse, characterized by its polemical nature and polarity of assessments; 3) the presence in a text of a socially significant political component related to the state power, government and / or people’s economic welfare, which are negatively represented in the IPW; 4) the prevalence in a text of a defamatory evaluative modality as well as the presence or possibility of the appearance of a protective text with a predominant apologetic modality; 5) the presence in a text of some tools specific to the IPW language: practices of speech aggression and / or speech manipulation; 6) more or less long-term repeatability of defamatory assessments in relation to the same target; 7) propaganda of a new value system contradicting the traditional one. These criteria should be taken into account in conjunction. Likewise, there is a problem of changes in the Russian language under the influence of the IPW, including those of a terminological nature.