Discourse Deployment under Conditions of Shortage of Information

The famous Skripal case and organization of its lengthy discussion in mass media generated a new phenomenon – a discourse that develops for quite a long time lacking a foundation for a substantive conversation. The paper uses materials from official and anti-establishment mass media to research the fundamental aspects of this discourse – its informational content, modality, emotional tonality and temporal limitedness, which leads to identifying the specific features of this poorly studied occurrence. The informational content is marked by a propensity to conflict and shortage of substantive information with the abundance of media materials about the Skripal family. The paper demonstrates how data that is insignificant from the perspective of clarifying the major event that has generated the whole discourse creates informational fluff around this hot subject and as a result the event itself is questioned. The paper explores the hypothetical modality caused by lack of reliable facts and extreme secrecy of the chemical weapons subject in general. Emphasis is made on the vivid sentiment of the discourse discussing the “Skripal case” and the lack of a visible conclusion of this speech communication dependent on its participants. This communication is deployed jerkily, through periodical information inputs. We arrive at the conclusion that the infinite prolongation of this subject is artificial by nature and servers some political and economic goals in the conflict between the West and Russia.