TOXIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE UNITED STATES AND UKRAINE: COGNITIVE AND DISCOURSIVE CONTRASTS

This paper represents a comparative study of cognitive and discursive contrasts in toxic political discourses in the United States and Ukraine. Toxicity is the perception of the behavior of a political figure that causes moral harm or discriminates against the addressee; it is characterized by radical trends in politicians’ and influencers’ worldviews to the right or left being the result of assigning the attribute "toxic" to representatives of opposing socio-political groups. Politicians’ utterances are toxic if they are aimed at destroying the beliefs and preferences of the opponent with harmful consequences for his/her personality or image. The study is based on videos of speeches delivered by American (Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter) and Ukrainian (Iryna Herashchenko, Oleh Liashko, Iryna Farion, Illia Kyva, and Oleksii Honcharenko) politicians labeled as "toxic" in the media. The paper is aimed at identifying common and distinctive means of verbal and nonverbal expression of toxicity in the speeches of American and Ukrainian politicians. The verbal markers of toxicity include the politicians’ explicit use of ideological, national, gender-related and other utterances that demean another person and discriminate against him/her. The nonverbal markers of toxicity encompass the manner of speaking (aggressive, loud, fast, screaming, hysterical, ostentatious, exaggerated) and his/her kinesics (tense movements and posture, clenched fists, impulsive gestures and head movements, exaggerated body movements and facial expressions, eyes, grimacing). The contrasting feature of the toxic speech behavior of American politicians is discriminating racist and sexist statements, which are conceptually related to the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements and explicate ideological and gender-related toxic thematic zones. Toxic themes in Ukrainian politics ignore gender-related issues, but focus on the conflicting ideological national-patriotic block of concepts (“Ukraine above all”, “Ukraine is not Russia”, “colonial status”, “language issue”). The commonality of the political discourses of the United States and Ukraine is the aggressive-emotional type of toxic politicians, whose speech is characterized by confrontational tactics of accusations and insults of the opponent, as well as active involvement of impulsive gestures and head movements, exaggerated facial expressions and aggressive speech to kinesically enhance verbal toxicity.

A Pit-bull in Lipstick: The Reciprocal Brand Rhetoric of Sarah Palin

This Major Research paper will focus on the Republican American politician Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a political figure who has played an interesting role in Republican politics over the last four years. As an unexpected candidate for John McCain’s 2008 Vice Presidential nomination, Palin garnered unprecedented media attention for a running mate. Sarah Palin is a media celebrity, a potential Republican candidate for the 2012 election, and an international household name. The purpose of this research is to explore Sarah Palin as a political actor and celebrity icon by analyzing her use of new media as a platform for her political rhetoric. Specifically, this study looks at the discourse used in Sarah Palin’s social media campaign, with a direct focus on the social media outlet of Facebook. Facebook is a non-traditional political media platform, which allows politicians contact with millions of users in a format that is social, personal and direct. Many politicians have been utilizing new media platforms in order to communicate their political messages to new and diverse audiences. This study analyzes how Sarah Palin is utilizing the medium of Facebook, and how the language she uses in communicating to her supporters affects their experience of current political events. This study aims to show the relationship between the rhetoric she chooses to employ, and the comment activity of her supporters on Facebook. Selections of Sarah Palin’s Facebook Note documents were chosen in order to narrow the scope of this research. The research questions that has directed this study is: Through the social media platform of Facebook, what function does Palin’s use of metaphor play in the reciprocal discourse of supporter comments? Do literary devices such as metaphor affect the nature of audience participation in political social media?

A Pit-bull in Lipstick: The Reciprocal Brand Rhetoric of Sarah Palin

This Major Research paper will focus on the Republican American politician Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a political figure who has played an interesting role in Republican politics over the last four years. As an unexpected candidate for John McCain’s 2008 Vice Presidential nomination, Palin garnered unprecedented media attention for a running mate. Sarah Palin is a media celebrity, a potential Republican candidate for the 2012 election, and an international household name. The purpose of this research is to explore Sarah Palin as a political actor and celebrity icon by analyzing her use of new media as a platform for her political rhetoric. Specifically, this study looks at the discourse used in Sarah Palin’s social media campaign, with a direct focus on the social media outlet of Facebook. Facebook is a non-traditional political media platform, which allows politicians contact with millions of users in a format that is social, personal and direct. Many politicians have been utilizing new media platforms in order to communicate their political messages to new and diverse audiences. This study analyzes how Sarah Palin is utilizing the medium of Facebook, and how the language she uses in communicating to her supporters affects their experience of current political events. This study aims to show the relationship between the rhetoric she chooses to employ, and the comment activity of her supporters on Facebook. Selections of Sarah Palin’s Facebook Note documents were chosen in order to narrow the scope of this research. The research questions that has directed this study is: Through the social media platform of Facebook, what function does Palin’s use of metaphor play in the reciprocal discourse of supporter comments? Do literary devices such as metaphor affect the nature of audience participation in political social media?

Towards A Model of How Populist Leaders Disappear from the Media

Research shows that the media have been one decisive factor in the rise of the most high-profile populist leaders across Western democracies, but also that media attention can begin to dip when populists become established actors. However, the circumstances under which a populist leader can experience loss of media interest in him or her have not been theorized. Therefore, this article makes a contribution towards filling this gap. I offer an explorative and reflective analysis of the diverging political trajectories of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump as a means of suggesting circumstances under which a populist leader is likely to be upstaged by another populist leader taking over the public spotlight. However, this first cut at identifying relevant variables in such a scenario highlights serious conceptual, methodological, and theoretical considerations that must be confronted in future research taking on this research question, and that I deliberately sidestep in this analysis.

The return of Rosie the Riveter: Contemporary popular reappropriations of the iconic World War II image

ABSTRACT The iconic image of Rosie the Riveter played an important role in American patriotic ideological processes during World War II. Aimed at the recruitment of women for wartime work, particularly in factories and traditionally masculine occupations, this representation of a woman in overalls and head scarf, with sleeves rolled up, showing her bicep and balled fist, declaring 'We can do it', has been a contentious point of discussion for its significance in feminist agendas since its first appearance. While building on, and playing to, the suffrage agendas of first wave feminism, the popular image of Rosie was transcended by second wave concerns about depictions of women in the workplace, such as those in films like Norma Rae (Ritt 1979), Silkwood (Nichols 1983), North Country (Caro 2005) and Made in Dagenheim (Cole 2010). But Rosie is making a comeback. The image has recently been appropriated in various ways and for various purposes - naively, ironically, satirically, as bricolage, pastiche and in sexualised portrayals - to represent contemporary women's issues and concerns, as well as arguably forming part of a backlash culture against feminism. Contemporary depictions have, for example, ranged from Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai and Beyoncé. This paper considers the development and transformation of the image of Rosie the Riveter and its contradictory (re)-appropriations in various contemporary popular cultural discourses. Keywords: feminist expression, Michel Foucault, gender roles, popular culture, Rosie the Riveter.