Reflection Of Post-Truth Politics In The Mirror Of The British Political Interview

Abstract

The article is focused on the popular notion of post-truth politics in contemporary mass media, which firstly appeared in the UK and the USA and is becoming global. In the United Kingdom the notion of post-truth was manifested in the context of the country’s discussions about the exit from the European Union. Careful consideration is given to the nature of post-truth, its features and linguistic means of realization are elaborated in the case-study of modern British political interviews. Political interview is a widespread genre of political discourse, with two distinguished communicants (an interviewer and an interviewee) representing a conversation both extempore and rule-governed in the dominant form of question-answer sequences, which is aimed at informing the mass audience, nominated as the final addressee, about topical issues. As a genre of political communication, it corresponds to its general principles and characteristics, which are clarified in the article. The methods of discourse analysis, pragmatic analysis and contextual analysis are used in the research. Post-truth includes fake news and statements, intentional concealment of information, equivocation and use of evasive techniques. Post-truth politics transmitted through the mass media puts a threat to our reality. We can no longer rely on any information we get and facts become all relative.

Keywords: Post-truth politicsmedia discoursepolitical discoursepolitical interviewequivocationevasiveness

Introduction

The world media have an enormous influence on the social conscience, they form and modify public opinion. The mass media are known under the name of the “Fourth Estate” referring back to the original separation of powers theory by a famous French philosopher Montesquieu (2002). The first reason for that is undoubtedly their all-pervading character bound to the wide spread of the Internet in the XXI century. Since the beginning of the Internet era many people from all around the world have got access to this huge universal database. The Internet is not only a digital storage of our heritage, but also an encompassing network where people can share their news, thoughts and ideas, events, knowledge, experience – their lives. Satellites provide us an immediate accessibility to this system which is why we have a very fast speed of information transfer. All the messages, textual, audio, video or others, are transmitted really quickly and we get to know in an instance what has just happened in the farthest corner of our planet.

Yet we don’t have any ways to verify those messages and what we can is only rely on the received information without any possibilities to understand or prove it, so our perception is more intuitive than cognitive. Intuition doesn’t deal with logics, deductions, argumentation or facts. On the contrary, it’s connected to our psychic and emotions, and is guided by ambivalent psychological concepts, such as stereotyping, analogical thinking, expressive appeal, ingroup favouritism and outgroup hostility, generalization, etc. Hence the second reason for the omnipotence of mass media is their ability to influence our minds and form our thoughts distantly and globally without a real deterrent. The check-and-balance system doesn’t work for the power of media.

Problem Statement

Nowadays with the rising influence of the media some of the associated dangers and problems become extremely important. Barber (2017), the US managing editor for the Financial Times, stated in his lecture at Oxford university in 2017 that there is a serious problem of fake news. He is alarmed that the word “fact” has disappeared in its original meaning, because people initially view all the information and all the facts as unreliable and disputable. Facts are subdued to individual judgement and thus are all relative.

Given that the media shapes our thoughts by “how it is said” rather than “what is said” many scientists warn of coming into the era of post-truth. The term is related to or denotes circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Due to its topicality post-truth was named Word of the Year 2016 by the Oxford Dictionaries (English Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2016). It shows the extent to which post-truth spread in our society. It takes place in various spheres – in the news, in politics, in business, in advertising, at workplace.

To the contrary of what might be assumed, such communication doesn’t raise indignation or rejection. It has become so commonplace that it is perceived as a matter of course. More than that, addressers of post-truth messages often have an image of someone demonstrating effective communicative skills, being smart, confident and knowing how to handle the situation. A manager or a politician who manages well is less real than a manager who only looks as if he does. Apparently, post-truth cases are no longer exception, but a rule. There has happened a shift from quantity to quality: an abundance of distorted information has finally led to the change in our comprehension. We buy into those myths and see such instances as a right way to behave, that is why this issue is so pressing.

Research Questions

In the process of problem solving it is necessary to understand and accept the problem in the first place. When we are aware of its presence, we already have a point to consider. Being able to articulate the problem of post-truth communication is important for identifying it. Learning about this notion, its nature and characteristics is required to deal with it. What messages can be defined post-truth? How are alternative facts usually presented? What are the intentions of the speaker? What are the linguistic means of post-truth realization? These are the questions we need to answer in our study of post-truth communication.

Purpose of the Study

Political communication, which is mostly broadcast by the media, has a general constant purpose of gaining power. Producing false statements and altering the truth are used to reach this purpose. That is why some philosophers even call post-truth a strategy for the political subordination of reality (McIntyre, 2018). Clementson (2016) states that politicians have a reputation for deception. In his study of the US presidential debates, he believes that equivocation and deception are essential for political discourse. Politicians use an array of speech tactics and rhetorical figures to shade or emphasize information, to send inflammatory and incorrect messages and to alter public opinion. Thereby they engage in the post-truth politics. We are particularly interested in the instances of post-truth in political interviews, because the genre presupposes a larger share of spontaneous speech in contrast with other genres of political discourse.

It is no coincidence that we have chosen British media as a data source. In the United Kingdom the notion of post-truth was manifested in the context of the country’s discussions about the exit from the European Union (European Union Referendum Bill, 2016), known as Brexit. The referendum was held in the year 2016 and the withdrawal, including the repeal of the initial European Communities Act 1972, is expected in the year 2019 (European Union Withdrawal Act, 2018). Therefore, the purpose of our research is to analyse politicians’ utterances containing distorted information and to reveal linguistic means of post-truth realization in the case-study of British political interviews.

Research Methods

Findings

Conclusion

The conducted research of modern British political interviews shows examples of post-truth communication which contains using alternative facts, distorted information, false messages. With the help of manipulative attempts, attributing the wrong meaning to the words and the use of positive semantics politicians create an untrue image of themselves or the discussed object. In most cases untrue statements were connected to the intentional concealment of real facts. By that we can talk about strategic manipulation. Bull (2015) views equivocation as a form of deception, as a deliberate and calculated communicative strategy.

Our last analysed example is peculiar because in this case the truth was revealed by the interviewer while in most examined interviews such instances of lies, mixed records or false statements stay firm and unquestioned, establishing what we today know as a post-truth politics. Evasion occurred in the majority of the messages and can be distinguished as an attributive characteristic of post-truth political communication in modern British political interviews.

References

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