MANIPULATION: INTERACTION, STRATEGY, TECHNIQUE, OR OBJECTIVE?

The article makes an attempt to capture the essence of manipulation and to uncover those parameters of analysis that allow us to characterize the phenomenon under study in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Manipulation is viewed as a psychological, social, cognitive and interactive phenomenon with complex structure. The author analyzes pros and cons of interpreting manipulation as a type of interaction, a communicative and/or cognitive strategy, a method of organizing interaction, a cognitive and/or communicative objective. The latter is achieved in a particular communicative situation as independent or secondary to a core communicative objective. The interpretation of the phenomenon under study in a broader context is justified as one of the options for the impact of one discourse participant (being either an individual or collective subject) on another (individual and/or collective subject). The paper describes parameters of interactions in which various manipulative strategies are implemented. It is considered advisable to distinguish between conventionally implemented manipulative strategies and non-conventional ones for a particular language and culture. We also considered heterogeneous factors - catalysts and inhibitors of various genesis, - which in one way or another affect the result of interaction and proposed a typology of manipulative influence, based on the multifactorial analysis. The paper tackles the arguments in favor of interpreting the genetic relationship of verbal influence as such and manipulation, which, in turn, allows us to describe manipulation in different types of discourse and different communication formats on a single basis and in close connection with the nature of the addressee’s intention, as well as with the features of the communicative and cognitive objective achieved by native language speakers in actual interaction. Integral and differential signs of (conditionally) positive and negative manipulation are revealed. The latter are interpreted as unequal alternatives to the development of interaction in cooperative, problematic and conflict communication. Manipulative strategies are interpreted as a conscious and/or intuitive (unconscious) choice of discourse participants needed to structure the interaction and provide a choice of heterogeneous means for achieving a specific communicative and cognitive objective.