Logos as a Source of Communicative Pressure Confrontation in Various Types of Discourse

Abstract

The paper dwells upon the study of logos as one of the sources of communicative pressure destructiveness. The paper considers peculiarities of realizing logos conflictogenes in various types of discourse: legal, socio-political and artistic. The material for the study is represented by transcripts of the lawyers’ speeches in the courtroom, transcripts of the politicians’ speeches in the parliament and socio-political talk shows, interviews, as well as excerpts from the works of art. With the language norm adopted as a speech standard, it is proposed to single out argumentation as an individual non-rhetorical type of persuasion. Rhetorical types of persuasion distinguish between speech persuasion as a cooperative type and communicative pressure as a confrontational type. Introduction of conflictogenes into one or more components of the speech model qualifies the speech persuasion as communicative pressure. A logos conflictogene is represented by an illogical statement caused by violation of the laws of formal logic. It is concluded that conflictogenes can perform their primary and secondary functions on the basis of which their possible combinations in the communicative pressure speech model are presented. The paper establishes the primary nature of logos conflictogenes. Moreover, their implementation in the speech model leads to the formation of secondary conflictogenes in the ethos. Although logos conflictogenes can realize the primary source of communicative pressure confrontation, most often they are accompanied by primary conflictogenes of the other components in the speech model. As a rule, it is stipulated by the lack of valid arguments which makes the addresser intensify speech persuasion by appealing to the emotional sphere of the addressee’s consciousness. Logos conflictogenes realizing communicative pressure should be distinguished from communicative errors, which are of an accidental unintentional nature and do not serve the pragmatic goal of the statement.