Наукові передбачення у масмедійному дискурсі російсько-української війни: комунікативно-прагматичний аспект
Scientific Predictions in the Mass Media Discourse of the Russian-Ukrainian War: A Communicative and Pragmatic Aspect

Author(s): Olena Dotenko
Subject(s): Cultural history, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: media discourse; critical discourse analysis; forecasting; scientific forecasting; Ukraine
Summary/Abstract: The subject of the study is scientific projections as one of the ways to create a verbal model of the future. The study is based on the text and video content of scientific forecasts about the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military. Today Ukrainians suffer from the Russian military’s actions and information warfare organized by the authorities and propagandists of the Russian Federation, they feel permanent stress and are very sensitive to prognostic content, which is supposed to help citizens prevent dangerous situations. Thus, Ukraine faces a serious problem of differentiating between high-quality and manipulative forecasts, which makes urgent the study of their communicative and pragmatic peculiarities, verification of the forecasts, and dissemination of information about the forecasting content quality. The aim of the study is to explore scientific forecasting as a special type of verbal modeling of the future, which has different communication purposes, specific intentionally organized non-verbal context of the messages about the future and means of linguistic impact on the recipient, as opposed to esoteric and naive empirical forecasting. The results of this study showed that scientific forecasts are characterized by the use of scientific methods of knowing the future, as evidenced by their connection with the present and the past, the combination of theoretical understanding of the probable version of the unfolding of events with empiricism, and the implementation of statements with an explicit or implicit hypothetical type of subjective epistemic modality. On the communicative-pragmatic level, scientific predictions are potentially verifiable, and involve causal statement as well as argumentation of the content of the main statement. The addressee of the message is directly or indirectly involved in the events related to the prediction, and the forecast takes into account their psycho-emotional and cognitive features and ability to react appropriately. The purpose of scientific forecasting is to provide information necessary for effective reaction to events and prevention of their negative consequences.

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