Discourse-conditioned lexical and semantic transformation of words in the American and British political discourse

The research is conducted within the framework of critical discourse analysis and aims to identify and describe the cases of transformation of connotation-free lexis into the words having distinct positive or negative evaluative connotations under the influence of dominant ideology and conventional social representations. The corpus of data under investigation is made up of elements of British and American political discourse: editorials of the broadcasting corporation “Voice of America”, speeches of British and American politicians, commentary of participants of political Internet-forums. In American political rhetoric the neutral word democracy acquires an axiological character. As a result, in some cases the substantivized relative adjective democratic develops a qualitative meaning and serves to express a positive evaluative characteristic. The lexemes fascism, communism, socialism, etc. referring to alien, i.e. anti-American, ideologies participate in the making of invective labels and nicknames which target is to discredit famous politicians. In the speeches of British government officials the toponym European becomes axiologically relevant and actualizes such commonly acknowledged values as freedom, democracy, security and prosperity. Due to metonymic transfer the anthroponym Assad acquires negative evaluative connotations and becomes a substitute of the concept Assad’s regime, thus conditioning the formation of a hostile and suspicious attitude to the actions of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.