Persuasion strategies in Joe Biden's political discourse

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of political discourse, which penetrates the modern society. Political discourse is made up by politicians. Under the framework of cognitive and communicative paradigm political discourse is a complex communicative phenomenon which is directly or indirectly aimed at distributing, exercising the political power and winning the majority of votes during election campaigns. The article yields the results of the analysis of communicative strategies in the political discourse of US President-elect Joe Biden during the presidential race and in his inaugural address. The focus is on the notion of persuasion, persuasive communicative strategies and tactics in political discourse. Persuasion, as a linguistic and cognitive process, is addressed to make a communicative impact on the addressee with the aim to convince him/her to support certain ideas. Persuasion is an illocutionary characteristic of persuasive communicative strategies. The research concludes that a persuasive impact on the audience is made by the tactics of contrast, generalization, reference to authority, and also myth-making. The tactic of contrast is based on semantic polarization. With the help of the generalization tactic the appeal to collective addressee as well as society solidarization are realized. The tactic of reference to authority is represented, on the one hand, by the appeal to religious context, on the other hand, by the appeal to famous historical figures. Historical background is also the basis for myth-making. The main pragmatic aim of the political discourse of US President is a call for unity and respect of democratic values.