Agonal strategies in the american election campaign discourse (a case study of the political debates of the 2023 republican primary candidates)

Abstract

The article analyses the methods of implementing the agonal strategies of political debate as one of the prototypical agonal genres of political discourse. For analysis, the speeches of politicians were selected during the 1st Republican primary debates held in the City of Milwaukee on August 23, 2023, streamed by the Fox News channel. The analysis allowed us to identify a 3-level structure of agonal strategies implemented by politicians within the framework of political debate. The 1st (basic) level of strategies – an introductive one – includes strategies for self-positioning, self-presentation and opponent defamation. The purpose of these strategies in terms of their agonal character is to position oneself as a leader worth winning the campaign, demonstrating individual undeniable advantages compared to other candidates and the expulsion of negative features of rivals. The verifying strategies of the 2nd level consist in operating with information received from the opponent aimed at producing an impact on the recipient, and include such strategies as self-defence and the opponent defamation. The additive strategy of the 3rd (highest) level combines the goals and objectives of the strategies of both lower levels; however, it has a special purpose inherent only to it – to give new meaning to the facts and phenomena reported by opponents, by introducing a new angle of tackling the problem. The main strategies at this level include ones of rational and emotional convictions realised by the tactics of introducing new facts and the new aspect ultimately aiming at establishing new semantic linkages in the recipient minds at the site of the destruction of semantic linkages, initially present in the speech of the political opponent. Thus, the study made it possible to ascertain that the genre of political debate, being a tactical repertoire of agonal behaviour strategies. is verbalised by various means, while strategies of a higher level can intersect with the lower ones’ strategies, nevertheless making explication of these strategies different, depending on the place of the strategy in the hierarchy.