Features of Discursive Structures in Political Communication

This article is devoted to the study of the discursive structures of political texts published on Twitter of the President of the United States. The material of the study was the statements of Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the period from November 1, 2019 to August 31, 2021. Its multimillion audience of subscribers makes Twitter a powerful political tool with the ability to influence public opinion. The purpose of this article is to identify the discursive structures arising in political communication as a result of the actualization of the category of discursive heterogeneity, which includes elements of interdiscursiveness and polydiscursiveness. The authors use various methods: descriptive, contextual analysis, comparative, methods of observation, content analysis and discourse analysis. Using the linguistic concept of the American scientist D. Himes S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G, the analysis of the situation components Setting and scene, Participants, Ends, Act Sequence, Key, Instrumentalities, Norms, Genre is carried out. Being a part of the media discourse and demonstrating the features of the Internet genre, the written messages of politicians are laconic, expressive, and tend to economize on linguistic means. The same communicants, depending on the context of utterances, become participants in different types of discourses. The study analyzes the foreign and domestic political discourses, the security discourse, as well as a number of accompanying special discourses that constitute political communication. The choice of the subject matter of the messages is due to the high degree of importance of issues of foreign and domestic policy, as well as stability and security.

Functions of Precedent Phenomena in the Political Discourse of the Elections in Belarus in 2020

The authors of the article investigate the texts of the opposition Telegram channel “Belarus of the Brain” in order to identify the precedent phenomena (hereinafter PF) functioning in them. Political discourse is at the core of contemporary discourse research with the problem of strategies and tactics for manipulating public opinion occupying an important place among other aspects of its studies. PFs provide the basis for these strategies, which determines the relevance of the research being conducted. The article presents an analysis of the functional characteristics of PFs of two groups: 1) PFs representing the Belarusian national culture and society; 2) PFs exhibiting foreign cultural space. Based on the theory of precedence developed by V.P. Moskvin, V.I. Karasik and G.G. Slyshkin, the authors resort to the contextological and structural methods, elements of discourse analysis, in order to outline obvious accents in the functional differentiation of these PF groups. While national PFs have a positive connotation and participate in the creation of the national identity of Belarus and the Belarusians, PFs of foreign cultural spaces are marked by negative connotations and are used to discredit the existing political regime. The authors highlight common functions of the PFs of both groups such as creating vivid images and communicating credibility and authority to the information provided. PFs actualizing foreign cultural space show a tendency to participate in the didactic function of teaching the average reader the peaceful mechanisms of a democratic society. The study of structural features allows us to come to the conclusion about the word combination as the major form of PFs’ realization. The structural complexity and predominance of proper names in the morphology of PF signal their multidimensional semantic nature as well as their social essence. The authors also point out the formation of the PF corpus within political discourse with such dominant source spheres as history and culture. The research proves that PFs of our days are used as actively as PFs referring to the past. By and large PFs act as a means of analyzing, interpreting and categorizing the phenomena of public life in the political discourse.

National Specificity of Dominance in Politicians’ Speech Behavior

The aim of the article is to analyze the dominant speech behavior of groups of parliamentarians, depending on the national and cultural specifics of the sender of the text, using the methodology adopted in Implicit Pragmalinguistics. The text of each speech is divided into small syntactic groups, which in Implicit Pragmalinguistics are considered the standard units of the analysis. In total, more than three thousand such units were analyzed during the study period. The material for the study of the politicians’ speech behavior was the texts of the speeches of 20 politicians speaking in English and Russian, presented in the period from 2019 to 2020 in their national parliaments, the British Parliament and the State Duma. The analysis shows that the majority of politicians are distinguished by a dominant type of behavior, which is expressed in the manifestation of a bright individuality. A successful politician is always a talented leader and organizer who has the prevalence of character traits that are associated with independence, decisiveness, authoritarianism and focus not only on himself/herself, but also on the audience. All selected groups of the politicians showed great confidence in what they are talking about, which indicates the signs of a successful and professional leader. In the course of a comparative analysis, we came to the conclusion that dominance in the speech of the politicians is manifested differently and depends on the nationality of the parliamentarians. Thus, the Russian-speaking politicians of both sexes confirm their collectivist cultural orientation in speech behavior, and the British generally follow the principles of individualism; the Russian-speaking female politicians are a little more categorical and confident in their speeches than the English-speaking ones.

“You are the Murderer!” The Semantic Function of Precedent Phenomena in the Interpretation of a Political Communicative Event in Modern Network Anecdotes

The article considers the semantic function of precedent phenomena in the interpretation of a political communicative event in the texts of modern network anecdotes. The material of the study was anecdotes, which actualize the verbal formula “Whoever calls names is called that himself” used by V.V. Putin in response to a statement by Joe Biden during an interview on ABC on March 17, 2021. In the process of analyzing the material, contextual and discursive analysis techniques were used, as well as elements of Intent-analysis and general scientific methods of generalization and comparison. Since ordinary humorous communication reflects the real ideas of Russian citizens about political events in the country, an analysis of the texts of jokes will reveal stable ideas about the government and the international political situation that have developed in the public consciousness. The study reveals that in the texts of anecdotes that appeared as a reaction to the political dialogue of J. Biden and V. Putin, the most frequent are precedent phenomena dating back to children’s folklore. The analyzed cycle of anecdotes is dominated by the topic of children’s yard quarrel, with which relations between the presidents of Russia and America are associatively correlated. Fiction, history and jurisprudence became other areas-sources of precedent phenomena in anecdotes about J. Biden and V. Putin. Due to the use of precedent phenomena dating back to various sources and causing numerous associations, there is a semantic variability in the interpretation of the same political event in ordinary humorous communication.

The Mythologeme «Conspiracy Theory» in the Modern Civilization Space

Modern civilization space is characterized by a high level of technical and scientific discovery, however, mythological consciousness and belief in conspiracy theories still exist. The article deals with one of the popular mythologies of modern civilization – the conspiracy theory. The relevance of the presented research is due to the importance of considering from the position of linguistic and cultural understanding the mechanisms of the generation and spread of myths in the modern communicative mass consciousness, which actively appeals to mythologems, despite the highly developed science. The analysis of a wide range of theoretical sources of both Russian and foreign authors is carried out in order to comprehensively study the stated issue. The description of universal and ethnospecific mythologies of the modern civilizational space is given, which indicates both the globalization processes and the uniqueness of the value system of each country, respectively. The determination of the values that make up the conspiracy discourse, the dominant “evil”, remains constant. The analysis of the empirical research material is carried out in line with the linguistic and cultural approach with the involvement of elements of frame analysis and discourse analysis. Special attention is paid to the issues of the structure of the conspiracy theory, as well as to the conspiratorial discourse, within which the frame «conspiracy theory» gets its implementation. When describing the «Conspiracy Mystery» frame, its hierarchically ordered structure is noted, which consists of interconnected subframes and slots. The analysis made it possible to determine the common characteristics of the «conspiracy theory» frame, as well as to identify areas of ethno-cultural reflection. The structure of the conspiracy discourse is described: participants, chronotope, value priorities, and strategies. It is noted that most of the theories under consideration are universal, but local ones that are widespread within a certain state remain.

Delegitimizing Strategies and Tactics in a Discourse of Political Scientists (on an Example of Publications of Cyril Rogov)

Offered article is devoted to a problem of studying of communicative repertoir of political scientists. The given problem is actual in connection with distinction of objectives which are pursued by politicians and political scientists, and as consequence, distinction of their communicative strategy and tactics used in professional work. A leading position a discourse of political scientists strategy and borrow tactics which have been directed on confirming of legality and illegality of political processes. The article describes the features of the implementation of delegitimizing strategies and tactics in the publications of one of the most authoritative Russian political scientists – Kirill Rogov. Delegitimization as macrostrategy is carried out through a number of private communicative strategy and tactics realizing them, in particular, T. van Leuven has allocated four basic ways of giving of illegality to actions of authority: it is 1) the link on authority; 2) an ethical assessment; 3) rationalization; 4) mythopoetics. All the listed strategy (though and with a different degree of rate) are used in Cyril Rogov’s publications. Results of research specify, that key, possessing the person attractiveness, as communicative tactics of delegitimization tactics of a moral assessment and tactics of analogy act tactics of the appeal to “impersonal” authority. As one of the main features of the argument of own positions Cyril Rogov actively uses the reference to realities of the Soviet epoch, spending thus analogy between events of the present and Stalin reprisals, and in such a way specifies on illegitimacy many political decisions and political events. In addition, all the delegitimizing strategies and tactics used by Kirill Rogov are distinguished by the variety of lexical and syntactic means used, as well as by their pronounced evaluativeness and metaphoricity.

Comparative Study of Intertexts in Newspaper Headlines (Based on the Material of the Russian and British Discourses of Sanctions Policy Towards Russia)

The article presents a comparative analysis of intertexts in the headlines of British and Russian articles, the subject of which is the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia. The source of the material was the authoritative publications of Russia and Great Britain (Kommersant and The Economist). The chronological scope of the study lies within 2014 – current days. As a result of the analysis of the headlines (60 in Russian, 60 in English) containing intertexts, the author identified 5 source domains, common for British and Russian discourses, and one source domain, specific for one discourse (Russian or British): “Set expressions”, “Proverbs and sayings”, “Mass culture”, “Literature”, “Proper names”, “Situations” (for British articles), “Names of organizations / projects” (for Russian articles). The study showed that the source domain “Set expressions” turned out to be the most widely represented, and the share of intertexts from the source domain in the Russian-language headlines is more than twice bigger than their share in the British headlines. The group of intertexts from the source domain “Proverbs and sayings” turned out to be the second most represented. The most common way to include an intertextual element in a headline is lexical transformation, when a word or several words are replaced with others corresponding to the content of the article. As for the effect of including an intertextual element in the headline it can be different: comic, if the author chooses a lexical transformation that contradicts the meaning of the original text; creating a negative / positive (usually negative) image of a person or situation; forming the reader’s opinion, similar to the opinion of the author / edition.

Methods of a Three-Component Analysis of Linguopragmatic Potential of an Internet Commentary in Political Internet Discourse

This article is devoted to the representation of the method of a three-component analysis of Internet commentary. Commentary is a special component of Internet discourse which is the reaction of representatives of society to any external or internal stimulus expressed linguistically, i.e. through the use of linguistic means. Due to insufficient coverage (for example, unlike Internet posts), commentary as a component of political Internet discourse represents a wide field for the study of linguists since, being a speech work, it can be analyzed from at least three positions, namely: the strategy and tactics used by the author, the means of stylistic expressiveness used and the type of speech act through which this commentary is put into use. A comprehensive analysis of these parameters makes it possible to establish the attitude of the audience (in this case, the electorate) to the personality of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Practical material for the study was the comments on the posts of Boris Johnson regarding Brexit (one of the key events in the political and public spheres of Great Britain’s life). The relevance of this work is due to the current anthropocentric paradigm in linguistics and the increased interest of linguists not only in humans as a participant of speech actions, but also in the interdisciplinary synthesis of scientific research methods to achieve the most voluminous, full-fledged, and complete results. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an example of the implementation of the three-component analysis methodology for Internet commentary on the example of some of the most striking and connotatively colored linguistic materials selected by the method of continuous sampling in the social network “Twitter”.

Language Policy of the CIS Countries: Current State and Prospects

Language policy issues are inextricably linked with the socio-political vectors of development of a state. The significance of this problem field is actualised with a number of examples from modern history, when the "language issue" became a source of social tension, led to various kinds of conflicts, including interstate ones. The article is devoted to the analytical study of the modern specifics of language policy in the CIS countries. Research attention is focused on nine states that are active members of the integration association (Ukraine, which de facto does not participate in the activities of the Commonwealth, and Russia are not considered due to the presence of administrative national autonomies and the number of different ethno-cultural communities, as well as the need to reflect in the work the peculiarities of the functioning of the Russian language, which has a special status in the region). The practice of implementing the language policy pursued in the CIS countries allows to generalize and compare the experience of states that have relatively recently received sovereignty and the ability to form an appropriate agenda independently. The analysis made it possible to identify the general directions of language policy, typical for individual countries: 1) protection of the languages of the titular nation with the consolidation of their status as the only state and official for all spheres of communicative interaction (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan); 2) carrying out an alphabetical reform in order to switch to the Latin alphabet (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan); 3) implementation of the policy of state bi- or polylingualism (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan); 4) attempts to solve precedent linguistic problems (nomination of the state language for Moldova, the status of the Russian language for Armenia and Georgia).

Language Markers of Leadership in Political Discourse

Leadership as an indispensable element of social relations is an object of research within different schools of thought; however, its common understanding has not been developed yet. Different authors share the opinion that leadership includes authority, ability to lead, take decisions, influence people, organize and structure group interaction, unite people to achieve a goal. In linguistics it is studied in sociolinguistics, political and anthropological linguistics. In the research the authors aim at detecting special language markers of leadership in the speech of a political leader which are verbalized by language means of different language layers, while their choice depends on sociocultural codes shared by the leader, typical of certain linguoculture, age, social, professional group, and stipulated by individual features of the leader’s personality. Considering the existing approaches to linguistic markers analysis, the authors point out at the relevance of sociolinguistic and athropolinguistic approaches, as these markers lie in the area of intersection of social dialect and leader’s idiolect. On the material of the interview of V.V. Putin to NBC journalist the authors attempt to detect, describe and classify markers of leadership in the political leader’ discourse. To define the lexical means of verbalization of leadership the authors employ the theoretical insights of conceptual fields theory. Pragmarhetoric markers are studied through speech acts theory. The research proved the authors’ hypothesis that a leader’s speech contains a multi-level complex of language markers of leadership, i.e. lexical and pragmarhetoric units which express the phenomenon of leadership in the discourse of a political leader.