Persuasive status of English news texts: constructional approach

Abstract

News texts not only inform readers about the latest events in the world, but also form their attitudes to a specific situation and convince them of the truthfulness of the presented facts. The persuasive status of news stories enables their analysis in the vein of cognitive rhetoric, which studies various media texts using rhetorical canons of invention, disposition, elocution, performance and cognitive structures. Morphosyntactic constructions, which are a combination of form, meaning and function, are a means of verbalizing news texts at the elocutionary level. Constructions reflect manipulative potential of news stories about Israel-Hamas war, which began in October 2023. The BBC site that declares its impartiality in the presentation of facts, phenomena and events reflects the confrontation between Israeli-Palestinian forces with the help of politically correct constructions with an emphasis on the brutality of the militants and the retaliatory military campaign on the part of Israel. The article represents persuasive potential of news texts on the example of two groups of constructions, designating the conflict and its participants. Attack-, operation-, escalation-, conflict-units, naming the war, reflect it as a planned temporary military activity, which is a continuation and complication of the previous conflict, and massacre- and slaughter-constructions underscore violence of Palestinian militants. The actions of the Israelis are represented by attack- and strike-constructions. Palestinian fighters are described by militant-, gunman-, armed group-constructions, representing them as brutal outlaws, and terrorist-construction is used in quotes of eyewitnesses and world leaders. Israelis are designated by Israeli army-, Israeli forces-, military-constructions, representing them as a regular army, despite the humanitarian crisis and the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip.