Self-Defence Strategy In American Political Interview

Abstract

The article is devoted to political communication analysis from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics and discourse analysis. Strategic approach to the discourse of American political interview is based on the communicative intention concept. Communicative intentions and purposes in political communication are studied. The purpose of the speaker is defined with the help of the whole complex of speech actions. Within the framework of communicative intention, the research of modern American political interview is presented. Political interview is viewed as a separate highly conventional genre of political discourse with strict distinction of speech roles. Careful consideration is given to its interlocutory nature, which determines political interview as an explicated dialogue on a certain problem, reflecting patterns of spontaneous public speech. American political interview text producing characteristics are addressed in the abstract. The research is dedicated to the self-defence strategy in American political interview, which is one of the most significant strategies in political communication on the whole. Self-defence tactics of justification and tactics of contestation are elaborated. This is a pragmatical “confusion pair” of tactics which are closely connected yet need to be specified. For that purpose, certain linguistic means of self-defence realization are clarified whithin the tactics of justification and contestation.