MYSTIFICATION IN THE SYSTEM OF MANIPULATIVE TACTICS
Authors: Zahnitko A. P. 
Published: October 2024

The article is devoted to the study of mystification as a separate manipulative strategy that can become a manipulative tactic in the manipulative strategy of positive or in the manipulative strategy of persuasion. The purpose of the study is to establish the status of hoax in the system of modern manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics with the definition of its qualifying features, as well as to find out the correlation of hoax in the system of modern manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics with other equal and/or unequal ones — argumentation, persuasion, persuasion, provocation, etc. The purpose of the study is to solve a number of tasks: 1) to reveal the peculiarities of different views and their evolution in the qualification of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics in communicative linguistics and linguopragmatics; 2) to interpret the manipulative strategy and manipulative tactics of hoax with the hierarchisation of their respective differential features; 3) to establish the trends in the use of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics of mystification in various discursive practices. The object of the analysis is hoax in the system of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics, and the subject is the system of multi-level resources for the implementation of the manipulative strategy and manipulative tactics of hoax in different discourse practices.
The study uses various methods, including the fundamental method of contradictions, based on the active use of facts as the basis of evidence, to identify contradictions in arguments, messages, news stories, etc, the method of comparison, which is of exceptional importance if the comparison is successful and/or deep, mainly through explication or implication of the model, the method of ‘pieces’ and/or ‘puzzles’, when the whole hoax used to achieve the most effective manipulation is differentiated into separate components that need to be assembled, as well as the method of discourse and contextual analysis, content analysis, etc.
Conclusions and Prospects. The defining features of the manipulative strategy of mystification include: unreality, illusion, deception, aggressiveness, quasi-argumentation, dominant rivalry, communicative orientation, which in a number of discursive practices acquire the functions of manipulative tactics. While in the not so distant past mystification was associated with fiction and non-fiction discourse, music, film discourse, and partly scientific (→ popular science) discourse, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought mystification to various marketing technologies. During this period, various manifestations of the manipulative strategy of mystification in political and journalistic discourse became especially important, undergoing various modifications and transformations.
A full-fledged examination of the functional field of the manipulative hoax strategy with the diagnosis of its various manipulative tactics, as well as the synthesis of other correlative and non-correlative manipulative and/or communicative strategies, is promising. It is relevant to compile a register of linguistic means of implementing the manipulative strategy of hoaxing, to diagnose the filling of everyday life with elements of hoaxing through pathogenic, anonymous and other texts. Modern artificial intelligence technologies significantly expand the functional load of the manipulative hoax strategy, so it is important to establish linguistic filters for the recognition and identification of such hoax products (dipfakes, virgifakes, etc.).