Descriptive Illusion or Untruth in Political Press
Descriptive Illusion or Untruth in Political Press

Summary/Abstract: Our study attempts to present a demonstration related to political language persuasion in the press of Constanta City, by resorting to rhetoric elements, the illocutionary and perlocutionary force of language and to the insertion of descriptive illusion or untruth. To this regard, I have selected over 40 articles pertaining to two local publications of Constanta City: “Cuget Liber” (C.L.) and “Telegraf” (T.), magazines of a different political orientation. I have selected by choice the front-page political articles (editorials, coverage, news, interviews) and those under the “Political” heading. The selection criteria were the following: the importance of the political event, precampaigns and elections, communication of manifestations, different conflicts or controversies between politicians, notoriety of political actors. Another criterion was the strategic space of the article in the newspaper page or the psychological means to attract the reader’s attention: uneven pages, the first and the last page, the superior part of the page, the upper right corner of the newspaper page. We judge the ideological content or the persuasive language in terms of intentionality, approaching a critical lecture regarding the forms of untruth occurred in the media: propaganda or illusiveness, disinformation, psychological action. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the fact that the media hosts, influences the political language but it also pretends to make it official and legitimate. The applications in media texts allow the study of processes related to intentional communication of information, pseudo – information and non – information. Within the political context presented in the written media, an important role is played by the prelocutionary objectives in locutory or illocutory acts.

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