ABSTRACT
Drawing on the points the authors made about ‘truth’ and ‘bias’ in unit A8, this unit explores how truth is shaped, presented, and undermined in various ways in media discourse. It will look at the different kinds of linguistic and multimodal strategies used in persuasive discourse as well as some of the ways they can use tools from linguistics and discourse analysis to detect deception and bias in media messages. The first step to learning how to recognize propaganda and media bias is to understand the basic linguistic and semiotic tools people use to persuade people. All media content makes use of rhetorical devices to convince readers of its ‘truthfulness’, whether we take ‘truthful’ to mean how reliable the facts that are reported are in the case of news, the degree to which the story and characters seem ‘genuine’ in the case of fictional content, or the ‘truthiness’ of propositions, policies or slogans when it comes to propaganda.
