LINGUO-PRAGMATIC DIMENSION OF PRESENT-DAY AMERICAN POLITICIANS’ SPEECHES

Tetiana Stetsyk

doi:10.20535/2410-8286.126323

Abstract

This paper deals with the strategy of persuasion in modern American political discourse. The linguistic analysis of political language is, in fact, the discovery of the ways how to manipulate the language signs to achieve specific political goals. Different mechanisms of influence on mass and organisation of effective communication are within the scope of this study due to the fact that language is an inexhaustible source of techniques and methods of persuasion. The aim of the paper is to identify the linguistic (grammatical, lexical-semantic, stylistic) and pragmatic characteristics of the strategy of persuasion in acceptance speeches of democrats as well as to establish common and distinctive features of the lingual component of their discourse. It examines and analyses the strategy of persuasion in the political discourse in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis and the conceptual framework proposed by T. van Dijk , namely personal persuasive strategies, i.e. positive self-presentation strategy and negative other-presentation strategy. The two candidates under analysis preferred declarative sentences to inform the electorate about their plans and ideas of reorganising the American social and political situation. The politicians used the personal pronoun “I” to state their own personal views and feelings, “we” – to get trust and support from the listeners. In their acceptance speeches, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama preferred a personal strategy of negative other-presentation to positive self-presentation strategy. The discourse of Democrats is vivid due to the great usage of stylistic means and lexis from different lexico-semantic fields.

Highlights

Language, as a unique human ability, a means of communication, a reflection of objective reality, a means of the speaker’s influence on a listener by changing their feelings, thoughts and actions (Krasnenko, 2011, p. 1), and implementation of the strategy of persuasion, has been under the watchful eye of scientists for decades
In our work we apply the following research methods: the critical discourse analysis proposed by T. van Dijk, 2006, syntactic analysis, lexical and grammatical analysis, stylistic analysis
Grammatical features of the acceptance speech The speech analysis showed that Hillary Clinton is trying to convey as much information as possible to her electorate about her political beliefs and plans regarding the country’s future, not forgetting to constantly remind the electorate about her long-term political service in the government, primarily using narrative sentences (86%)

Summary

Introduction

As a unique human ability, a means of communication, a reflection of objective reality, a means of the speaker’s influence on a listener by changing their feelings, thoughts and actions (Krasnenko, 2011, p. 1), and implementation of the strategy of persuasion, has been under the watchful eye of scientists for decades. The revealing of the system of political influence mechanisms, the definition of its system-and-structural organisation in its current state requires a great attention of the representatives of various realms of science Many scholars devoted their works to the study of political discourse as a special form of communication, the discovery of mechanisms of complex interrelations between language, government and society, the research of genre-and-stylistic features of political speeches and verbal means of their effective influence on the masses’ consciousness (Halliday, 1985; van Dijk, 2006; Dunmire, 2007; Duran, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2011; Guzak, 2013). In our work we apply the following research methods: the critical discourse analysis proposed by T. van Dijk, 2006 (to select personal persuasive strategies within the framework of the general communicative strategy of persuasion), syntactic analysis (to determine the structure of sentences and syntactic links in the acceptance speeches), lexical and grammatical analysis (to classify lexical units in the discourse of the Democratic Party’s representative, as well as to analyse the persuasive expression means at the grammatical level of language), stylistic analysis

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