Emotives in the speech of linguistic personality of the politician in the US and Russian media discourse: comparative analysis

Abstract

The relevance of this research is substantiated by the growing importance of the emotional aspect of modern media communication discourse, as well as the by the fact that linguistic personality of the politician in the realities of current electoral systems of the United States and the Russian Federation can be an instrument of emotional impact upon the audience, first and foremost with the use of emotive lexicon. The goal of this article lies in description of the results of comparative study of emotives in the US and Russian media discourse, determined in the speech of linguistic personality of the politician. The research material leans on media speeches of the candidates for the presidency of the United States and the Russian Federation, covering the period from May 2016 to April 2018. Methodological framework is comprised of the linguoecological and emotionological approaches, namely the linguistic theory of emotions of V. I. Shakhovsky, who outlines the three semantic statuses of emotivity of the lexicon. It is established that linguistic personality of the politician in the US and Russian media discourse is actively and diversely represented via emotive lexicon. However, the degree of intensity of emotional manifestations of linguistic personality of the Russian politician is greater than the verbal manifestations of the US politician. The determined emotives and their frequency in the speech of linguistic personality of the politician in the US and Russian media discourse are a new achievement for the discursive linguistics, pragmalinguistics, and emotionology. This research contributes to the development of psycholinguistics, political linguistics, and media linguistics, as well as further study of emotives in the political media discourse of different linguistic cultures from the comparative perspective.