«Toxic media text» as a new term: an experience in concept analysis

Abstract

Mediatization of reality in its social and personal dimensions, strengthening and at the same time latency of the aggressive- conflict principle in virtual public communication, expansion of the sphere of destructive actions and their results in connection with the increase in the number of such communication fields and their actors lead to the emergence of new objects of the social world and their nominations. One of the important concepts of our time is becoming “toxic media text”, which, firstly, conceptualizes a shift in mass media communication towards pressure on the psyche of the recipient with the help of various verbal and non-verbal means, and secondly, contributes to the establishment of new forms of communication in any other communication systems. The work attempts to state a new concept and, accordingly, a new term, the emergence of which is due to the challenges of the time. The purpose of the work is to give a meaningful description of the new term “toxic media text” based on the method of concept analysis; free writing became an additional research method. The appeal to the linguoconcept as a relevant methodological unit of cognitive order is due to the fact that it accumulates information from the linguistic, social, cultural, psycho-emotional and other spheres. Based on the analysis of lexicographic sources, it can be argued that the construct “toxic media text” has an international status, conceptualizes ideas about the text transmitted through any media channel that causes harm (mental and even physical) to the interlocutor. It is based on bodily and morbid metaphors, figuratively representing the social effect of a toxic media text at different levels of its existence, different levels of its organization. Its explanatory potential equally consists of rational and emotional components. Today, the nomination “toxic media text”, which names the corresponding mental construct, can claim the status of a term, since, firstly, the proposed terminological unit is associated with a new, separate phenomenon of socio-cultural reality and, accordingly, with a new scientific concept, and secondly, it has such terminological features as borrowing, specialty, special metaphoricality, the purpose of which in scientific discourse is to convey differentiating meanings (“poisonous”, “toxic”) most accurately through familiar and understandable images and thus distinguish this concept from related ones, denoting other forms of verbal aggression.