STYLISTIC PECULIARITIES OF JOE BIDEN’S MICROBLOG IN TWITTER SOCIAL NETWORK

Abstract

The present article aims at analyzing stylistic features of the Internet discourse on the material of a microblog by a famous world politician Joe Biden in his official Twitter account. The subject of our research is various stylistic devices by which the transfer of the author's emotional state to his readers and his attitude towards the major world events is formed. A range of scientific methods have been employed to classify the means of expression, namely: descriptive and comparative methods as well as the method of stylistic and discourse analysis. To achieve this goal, the peculiarities of the functioning of stylistic devices have been considered. The frequency of using these tools in the Internet discourse under study has also been studied. In general, Joe Biden’s tweets are characterized by highlighting the fast progress of his administration in various spheres of life, the use of both colloquial and bookish vocabulary, and scarcity of law and political terms. The tweets under analysis contain numerous lexical stylistic devices, among which the most frequently used appeared to be metaphor, metonymy and epithet. Moreover, the American president employs plenty of syntactic stylistic devices such as rhetorical questions, ellipsis, anaphora, stylistic repetition and gradation. Antithesis, epiphora and anadiplosis are few in occurrence. Also, this microblog can be characterized by the use of such phonetic stylistic devices as alliteration of consonant sounds /r/, /k/, /s/ and /m/ as well as assonance of vowel sounds /æ/ and /e/. Thus, Joe Biden’s microblog is rich in various stylistic devices. Key words: the Internet discourse, microblog, Twitter, Joe Biden, stylistic devices.