Verbal political symbols in the communication of society and government: the experience of typologization

Abstract

The object of the study is the phenomenon of verbal political symbols, which is understood as a key sign of political discourse that has lost its original meaning and, in the course of secondary signification, receives opportunistic meanings beneficial to political subjects in order to influence public consciousness. The subject of the study is the possible grounds for the typologization of verbal political symbols, as well as basic typological series, operationalized for use in empirical studies of political communications. The author examines in detail the methodological aspects of typologization based on the concepts of social constructionism and symbolic politics, as well as semantic, syntactic and pragmatic bases of typologization of symbols.  The main conclusions of the study are the identified basic bases of typologization of verbal political symbols: semantic (belonging to certain thematic conglomerates of concepts, belonging to political ideology, attitude to the state position), as well as syntactic and pragmatic (status and level of authority of the subject – creator of the symbol, channels of popularization, the duration of the life cycle of the symbol, universal functions of verbal symbols in politics). A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the analysis of thematic conglomerates of concepts peculiar to Russian political discourse. The novelty of the research lies in the application of a typological approach to the phenomenon of verbal political symbols, as well as the identification of the main features that can be used for the typology of discursive symbols in the future.