Linguacognitive Mechanisms in Promotional Discourse (based on the Example of Selling Information Products by Bloggers)

Abstract

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that Internet discourse plays an important guiding role in the functioning of modern society as a cognitive system; At the same time, the audience of bloggers reaches a significant number of people. Recently, the activities of Internet authors who promote their goods and services have become a serious problem for society. Bloggers promote their information products (courses, marathons, guides, checklists), the effectiveness of which is almost impossible to measure. The demand for information products is explained by the audience’s desire to change their lives for the better without taking any real action. The purpose of the study is to identify what linguocognitive mechanisms of influence are used by the author of marathons, Elena Blinovskaya, to create her promoting discourse on the Internet. Empirical research material – 150 blogger posts on social networks. The object is the Internet environment, the subject is linguocognitive mechanisms and their use by the Internet author to optimize promoting discourse. Research methods: content analysis, with the help of which fragments of discourse that contain linguocognitive mechanisms were identified and counted; linguocognitive analysis, which made it possible to clarify the content of cognitive language experience by establishing the relationship between knowledge and the method of its presentation. The results of the study suggest that one of the most popular bloggers actively uses linguocognitive mechanisms of influence. The found fragments of discourse contain linguistic tools of influence that manifest themselves at all levels of language (lexical, phonetic, syntactic, graphic). As a result of the study, cognitive mechanisms were also found: appeals to different levels of authority; the use of pseudo-statistics, affirmations, storytelling and many other mechanisms. It was concluded that the blogger’s promoting discourse has signs of magical thinking, as evidenced by the blogger’s dialogues with the Universe; hypersemiotization; emphasizing the importance of beautiful dates. The research perspective is to pay attention to the non-verbal suggestive mechanisms of influence that Internet authors use when creating their promoting discourse.