The Manipulative Strategy of Discrediting in US Political Interview

Abstract

The research aims at the speech discrediting strategy investigation in the light of the manipulative influence on the addressee. The American politicians’ interviews serve as a material for the case investigation. The paper considers, the concept of a political interview and the implementation of a discrediting strategy into a political text, highlights the main tactics and techniques of the discrediting strategy like the tactic of “unsupported derogation of authority”, comparative tactics, the “quoting the object of discredit” tactic, accusation tactics, bullying tactics, the tactics of insult, polarizing tactics, tactics of a precedent text “hooking”, the tactics of “aggressive opponent”. The study provides the speech analyses of discrediting strategy implementation. The paper applies the methods of contextual and content analyses of political interview texts regarding the means of discrediting strategy realization via political discourse analysis. The paper results in describing discrediting strategy tactics and the language means that realize each tactic correspondingly.