Abstract
In political cultures of a number of countries, the creation of a politician’s media image is based on the fundamental principle of his/her work being formulated as the achievement of the goal of ensuring a nation’s well-being and a country’s development. The present article demonstrates concrete similarities and differences discernible in the construction of a politician’s media image in the Russian, Lithuanian and Serbian media discourses from a rhetorical perspective. The methodological basis of the investigation is provided by the ideas of the new rhetoric and Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca’s assumption concerning the fact that the speaker’s ideas are accepted (or not accepted) by the audience not depending on the degree of the strictness of logical propositions and conclusions, but rather on the fact of whether the hearers have adhered to the grounds given by the speaker. Consequently, a researcher analysing the ways text influences the consciousness of those receiving it may identify shared truths and value judgements. On the basis of the analysis of contextual argumentation used for the creation of the media image of the candidates for the post of mayor in the three media discourses, an attempt to establish shared truths and values as well as certain regularities in the process of media image creation characteristic of the Russian, Lithuanian and Serbian media discourses has been made.
Highlights
The problem of the creation of the image of a candidate for a particular political position in pre-election discourse seems attractive to many linguists; works comparing certain aspects of pre-election discourses are not numerous
What is meant by a speech culture are the rhetorical peculiarities of a candidate’s media image creation in pre-election discourse, i.e., the peculiar way the arguments of universal and contextual argumentation ad rem and ad hominem are used in media texts about elections
The Russian candidate uses WE-constructions when referring to the voters, i.e., the speaker coheres his interests with the hearers’ interests, whereas the Lithuanian candidate uses YOU-constructions and has a direct dialogue with his electorate, the Serbian candidate distances himself from the voters by using the third-person pronoun THEY
Summary
The problem of the creation of the image of a candidate for a particular political position in pre-election discourse seems attractive to many linguists; works comparing certain aspects of pre-election discourses are not numerous. The Russian, Lithuanian and Serbian subsets of the sampled materials correlate among themselves; all the three subsets contain materials where the candidate is speaking in the grammatical first person (in interviews and pre-election addresses) and the materials about the candidate presented from the “he/she” perspective (pre-election video clips, information messages), all the three subsets of materials are similar in terms of the volume, the quantity, the time of production, the genre and the pathos. The analysis of the sampled materials demonstrated the fact that a positive media image may be created through the use of such means of contextual argumentation as rhetorical devices (emphasizing the fact that the interests of information recipients’, that is, the voters’, are important for the speaker, that is, the candidate), appeal to authority and tradition, the use of evaluative lexis and particular grammatical forms as the ad hominem arguments. The Russian candidate uses WE-constructions when referring to the voters, i.e., the speaker coheres his interests with the hearers’ interests, whereas the Lithuanian candidate uses YOU-constructions and has a direct dialogue with his electorate, the Serbian candidate distances himself from the voters by using the third-person pronoun THEY
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