Impression management tactics in Hungarian political debate shows

Abstract

Impression management is a complex, productive phenomenon which occurs in every human interaction. Social-psychological and pragmatic research pays attention to the different aspects, levels and discursive features of impression management (Goffman 1959; Gordon 2011; Leary 1995; Nemesi 2011). According to social psychology, impression management is a universal attempt by means of which the interlocutor projects consciously or unconsciously a certain image about herself (eg. Schlenker 1980). Interlocutors can apply various strategies in the course of impression management, there are various taxonomies regarding the impression management strategies or tactics (Fiske 2004; Jones&Pittman 1982; Leary 1995), which are based on the presumed motivation of the interlocutors. For example, Jones and Pittman (1982) differentiate the strategy of intimidation, ingratiation, self-promotion, exemplification and supplication, while Leary (1995) proposes different tactics such as self-presentation, remembering and forgetting, attitude statements, public attributions, social associations, conformity and compliance, and highlights the role of nonverbal behaviour and physical environment. Tedeschi and Riess (1981) divides strategies into two groups. These are the assertive and defensive impression management strategies: the interlocutors attempts to create, maintain but also to protect their impression in case of threatening their image. Besides, even the type or genre of interaction can modify the patterns of impression management therefore legal discourse, political discourse, interviews and daily conversation require different strategies because the interlocutor needs to satisfy distinct expectations (Archer 2018; Lipovsky 2006; Molek-Kozakowska 2013; Nemesi 2011). This study presents a complex definition of impression management focusing on the intentional and evaluational aspects. The definition is based on social psychological and pragmatic approaches. In addition, the present paper also proposes an extended taxonomy to determine the impression management strategies in a new genre, namely political debate shows which belong to the semi-institutionalised discourse type (Ilie 2001, 2006). The goal of this genre is the collation of different ideas and argumentation of political issues. The participants are aware of the presence of the internal and external audience therefore they form their projected image by the use of language, the choice of linguistic tools and behaviour patterns in order to affect the audience’s opinion about a political person, a party or ideology. The special properties of this type of semi-institutionalised discourses reveal new impression management strategies which are not covered by the previous taxonomies. The compiled multimodal corpus contains fifteen videos (appr. 600 minutes) from Hungarian political debate shows where the participants are politicians, journalists, and political experts. These videos are taken from different political debate shows therefore the debate shows and their channels support different political ideologies. The study uses the conventional transcription of conversation analysis by Jefferson (2004). On the basis of the corpus, the study differentiates seven main impression management tactics which include subcategories. The categories are built simultaneously with the processing of the videos and set up with heuristic method. The proposed taxonomy contains tactics such as identity projection, verbal aggression, expressing erudition, referring to authority, goading other’s curiosity, expressing attitudes, revisualising certain events. The study shows that there are several linguistic items which help to reveal certain kinds of impression management. The defined impression management tactics take the political identity, or even the personal and collective identity into consideration. Moreover, these tactics follow the desired properties of a political performer in the Hungarian culture. The proposed taxonomy offers a wide scope to the phenomenon of impression management in political discourse because it lays on the cooperative–competitive continuum of linguistic behaviour. It is divided into two main aspects such as positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation (cf. van Dijk 1998). This paper also aims to demonstrate that behind the assertive or defensive strategies, impression management tactics may belong to the offensive linguistic behaviour depending on the socio-cultural and discoursive contexts. The suggested categories may provide a deeper insight into the possible intentions, motivations and cultural patterns underlying the utterances in public talks.