COMMUNICATIVE ESSENCE OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE: CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES AND MAIN FUNCTIONS

Abstract

Objective. The objective of the article is to substantiate the communicative essence and semantic features and characteristics of political discourse as a subject of linguistic and political research. Methods. The main scientific results are obtained using a set of general scientific and special research methods, such as: analysis, systematization and generalization of scientific literature, induction, deduction (to identify approaches to understand the essence of political discourse and its characteristics). Results. Discourse is one of the most important communicative categories that reflects speech interaction. It is the subject of study of various sciences, such as sociology, political science, philosophy and others. Analytical review of research on discourse, in particular political, shows that the representation of this scientific topic has its own tradition, marked by the undoubted achievements of researchers who consider political discourse as a type of communicative activity, interactive phenomenon, speech flow having various forms of expression (oral, written, paralingual), takes place within a specific channel of communication, is governed by the strategies and tactics of the participants; synthesis of cognitive, linguistic and extralinguistic (social, mental, psychological, etc.) factors that are determined by a specific range of “life forms”. It is determined that political discourse is a complex mental-communicative activity, which is a set of process and result and includes both non-lingual and linguistic aspects and is focused on the transfer of political information rather than on perlocutionary influence on the electorate (persuasion motivation to action) through the implementation of appropriate strategies and tactics. As a discursive practice, political discourse is characterized by a number of specific features (institutionality, informativeness, semantic uncertainty, remoteness and authoritarianism, theatricality, dynamism), among which manipulativeness has one of the leading roles. The author attempts to distinguish different types of political discourse according to the content characteristics and the addressee.