LINGUO-PRAGMATIC AND SEMANTIC MEANS OF IMPLEMENTING THE PERSUASION STRATEGY IN ENGLISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

In modern society, linguistic sciences pay close attention to political discourse, since there exists a strong relationship between language and politics, which makes their separate existence impossible. That is why professional teams of philologists, imagemakers and PR specialists work on politicians’ speeches. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that a multifaceted analysis of politicians’ verbal behavior, communicative strategies, tactics and techniques they use to implement intentions in public affairs contributes to a clearer understanding of political discourse and efficiency determination in the impact of politicians’ speeches on the mass addressee. The article deals with the consideration of political discourse and politicians’ verbal behavior peculiarities (based on a case study of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speeches). The authors give a brief overview of Russian and foreign scientists’ works on communicative strategies and tactics. Most of the focus is on the ways to persuade the audience. The persuasion strategy is viewed as a macro strategy implemented with the help of an argumentation sub-strategy. The paper provides a classification of tactics that explicate an argumentation strategy, as well as the pragmalinguistic means used by politicians to manipulate public opinion and audience behavior are examined. The purpose of the study is to describe the macro strategy of persuasion in British political discourse, as well as the tactics for its implementation. The results obtained can be used for lectures on the theory of linguistic manipulation, semantics and pragmatics of conversation, imageology.