ABSTRACT
This chapter covers how linguistics can contribute to developing Military Humanities as a field by showing how, particularly, corpus linguistics can serve as part of the line of defence against fake news and (other types of) disinformation. The authors draw on their experiences and insights from the Fakespeak project devoted to the identification of fake news based on linguistic cues. Their contribution to this volume is twofold: in the first, theoretical part, the authors place their research topic in a broader context, outline a framework for understanding fake news in the two dimensions “veracity” and “honesty” and in terms of mis- and disinformation, and present some findings and observations from the Fakespeak project. The second, empirical part is a close investigation of linguistic features of genuine versus fake news in English on the topic of war and, hence, an illustration of how linguistic methods can be applied as tools that can help identify misleading textual contents. Thus, the chapter shows how insights from linguistics, through its emphasis on critical thinking and rigorous methods, can contribute not just to strengthening military education and practice but even to enhancing societal resilience against disinformation.
