Speech strategies of modern political discourse

The problem of communication in the political sphere, especially in times of political and diplomatic crises, is particularly acute. Information wars accompany all conflicts – armed, economic or diplomatic – and the weapon in these conflicts is language. The ability to distinguish linguistic means and strategies of political communication and to construct a political text is an important communicative skill of any political scientist, diplomat or PR specialist. Therefore, this topic has an enduring interest and relevance.

The object of this study is the English-language political discourse: speeches of modern English-speaking politicians of the USA and European countries.

The subject of the research is speech strategies used by modern US and European politicians.

The aim is to investigate speech strategies in political discourse from the perspective of pragmatics and transactions theory.

Research objective is to consider the principles of pragmatics and speech act theory as applied to the analysis of political discourse.

The methodological basis of the research is the theory of speech acts, E. Berne's theory of transactions, as well as the works in the field of general theory of discourse by N. D. Arutyunova, O. L. Mikhaleva, V. I. Karasik and political discourse by A. N. Baranov, V. I. Karasik, E. I. Sheigal, I. V. Shcherbak.

The understanding of the term "discourse" in general and "political discourse" in particular is an important aspect of this work. Discourse is a widely used term in modern linguistics; nevertheless, there are still many interpretations of this concept. In the series of related notions "language - speech - text - dialogue - discourse", discourse is opposed to text, less often to language, and is often equated with speech (language in action). The interpretation of discourse as dialogue is based on the presence of two fundamental roles of the communicative act - the addressee (speaker, writer) and the addressee (listener, reader), which can be alternately redistributed between the participants of the discourse (dialogue) or be assigned to one and the same person (monologue).

According to A. N. Baranov's concept, political discourse forms "the totality of all speech acts used in political discussions, as well as the rules of public policy, illuminated by tradition and tested by experience." He notes that the communicative task of the news media text is to transmit to the addressee, firstly, cognitive information, that is, new information, and, secondly, emotional information about the evaluation of the reported in the news article by the author [2, p. 6 ].

Russian linguist V. I. Karasik views discourse as a unity of text and communicative situation. From a sociolinguistic point of view, he treats discourse as "the communication of people considered from the position of their belonging to this or that social group or in relation to this or that speech-behavioral situation, such as institutional communication" [3, p. 194]. Professor of linguistics Michael Stubbs identifies the following main characteristics of discourse:

• -    formally, a discourse is a unit of language that exceeds a sentence;

• -    in terms of content, discourse is associated with the use of language in a social context;

• -    in its organization, discourse is interactive, that is, dialogic [8, p. 11].

According to E. I. Sheigal, "political discourse is communication, the main intention of which is the struggle for power (also the seizure, maintenance, distribution of power)" [9, p. 4]. Within the framework of the field approach, she proposes to define political discourse as such "if any of its structural elements (subject, addressee, context) correlates with the sphere of politics" [9, p. 371]. This approach is relevant, as it can be used to identify the areas of intersection of political discourse with other forms of non-institutional and institutional discourse.

In the work "Political discourse: Specificity of manipulative influence", where the substantiation of the linguo-cognitive nature of the manipulation mechanism is offered, the researcher is of the opinion that political discourse is a sphere of expression of struggle and rivalry for power, which has a number of system-forming features, such as: a) purpose of communication, b) participants of communication, c) ways of communication).

Three pragmatic strategies used in political discourse are distinguished as ways of communication and:

• 1.    upward strategy;

• 2.    strategy of downgrading;

• 3.    strategy of theatricality [5].

The strategy of promotion reflects the speaker's desire to present himself in a favorable light, aimed at demonstrating his candidacy only from positive sides. This strategy is implemented through the following tactics:

• -    Analysis-plus tactics – parsing the situation, which involves implicit (hidden) expression of the speaker's positive attitude toward the situation or people's actions being described;

• -    Presentation tactics – presenting someone in a positive light. To implement it, lexical units with positive connotations are used, a direct reference to the positive qualities of the subject of speech is made;

• -    Implicit self-presentation tactics can be considered a special case of presentation tactics, using which a politician indirectly puts himself or his party in the most favorable light;

• -    Criticism rebuttal – a tactic that involves the presentation of arguments and/or facts in order to justify or explain actions and deeds;

• -    Tactics of self-justification – denial of negative judgments about the object of criticism and its involvement in what is being negatively evaluated, an attempt to justify one's behavior.

In political discourse, speech behavior appears to be a complex multifaceted phenomenon, determined by the communicative intentions of the speaker. To achieve the main goal of political communication any permissible means are used, including various strategies and tactics of political discourse.

Speech act is a purposeful speech act, performed in accordance with the principles and rules of speech behavior, accepted in this society; a unit of normative socio-verbal behavior, considered within the framework of a pragmatic situation. The main features of speech acts are: intentionality, purposefulness and conventionality. The sequence of speech acts creates a discourse [1, p. 59].

Speech act is a minimal unit of speech communication; the production of a particular sentence under certain conditions, committed in accordance with sets of constitutive rules [8].

In linguistics, some researchers correlate the concept of "speech genre" with the term of speech act theory "speech act", considering them analogous [10, p. 127].

The function of the speech act and the intension of the speech political discourse are not identical concepts. In this regard, the analysis of the intentional orientation of speech discourse requires a careful study of all its aspects.

To perform the speech act means: to utter articulate sounds belonging to a commonly understood language code; to construct a statement from the words of a given language according to the rules of its grammar; to provide the statement with meaning and significance (i.e. to correlate it with reality), implementing the speech (Locution); to give the speech purposefulness (illocution); to affect the consciousness or behavior of the recipient, cause the desired consequences (perlocution).

J. Austin distinguishes, therefore, three types of speech acts:

• 1.    locutionary – the act of speaking in itself, the act of constitution. For example, "He told me: shoot her.

• 2.    illocutionary – expresses an intention to another person, outlines a goal. In fact, this kind of act is an expression of communicative purpose. For example, "He encouraged me to shoot her."

• 3.    perlocutionary – causes a purposeful effect and expresses the impact on the other person's behavior. The purpose of such an act is to cause the desired effect. For example, "He persuaded me to shoot her". [7, p. 24].

• J. R. Searle distinguishes in the speech act: the utterance act (English utterance act); the propositional act, which carries out referencing (object selection) and predication (attribution of a feature); the illocutionary act, which realizes the goal setting of the speaker (a request, a promise, a message) [8].

As it has already been said, the founder of the theory of speech acts is J. L. Austin, who considers the statement as a performance of action, and not only as announcement of information. Thus, J. L. Austin considers his classification of speech acts to be derived from the classification of performative verbs, i.e. those verbs which, when used in the first person singular of the present indicative tense of the active voice, act as the nuclear elements of explicit performative statements (statements of action). He recommends selecting verbs with performative potential from English dictionaries. J. Austin suggested distinguishing five classes of performative (illocative) acts:

• 1)    verdictives, with the help of which the speaker expresses his assessment of something or someone; (the class-forming feature for multipleverdictives is an action like a verdict of the jury, arbitrator or referee; a positive or negative assessment, etc.);

• 2)    exercisers (exercitives), which serve for the exercise of the speaker's power (orders, instructions, etc.), (the class of exercisers combines statements through which power functions and the rights and authority of the speaker are exercised (appointment to a position, order, compulsion, warning, advice, prohibition, etc.);

• 3)    commissives (commissions) – expression of promises and obligations, commissions express promises and other commitments made (cf. the obligation of a party in a contract, the military oath, the Hippocratic oath, etc.);

• 4)    behavatives – regulate social behavior, the relationship of communicants, etc.;

• 5)    expositives – determine the place of a statement in the course of a conversation (I admit, deny, etc.) [7, с. 130].

According to A. N. Baranov, he only gave characteristic examples of such acts - question, answer, information, assurance, warning, assignment, criticism, etc., noting that each language has its own nomenclature of such acts. Subsequently, the theory of speech acts revealed the distinctive features of the illocutionary act: it differs from the locutionary act by the feature of intensionality, i.e. connected with a certain goal, intention, and the perlocutionary act is opposed by the feature of conventionality, i.e. by the presence of certain rules, the action in accordance with which automatically ensures the successful implementation of this illocutionary act by the speaker [2].

Taking into account different parameters, the whole set of illocutionary acts has been divided by J. Searle and is divided into five main classes:

Representatives, oriented from reality to the statement, aim to reflect the state of affairs in the world, presuppose a relevant opinion of the speaker, and their propositional content is not limited by anything. Examples of representational directives are: reporting, judging, predicting, qualifying, acknowledging, describing.

Directives, with an orientation from the statement to reality, are intended to induce the addressee to do / not to do something, assume the presence of a corresponding desire of the speaker, and their propositional content always consists in the fact that the addressee will do / will not do some action in the future. This class includes requests, bans, advice, instructions, appeals and other types of incentive speech acts.

Commissions, oriented, as well as directives, from the statement to reality, are used by the speaker in order to bind himself with the obligation to do / not to do something, assume the presence of the corresponding intention, and their proposition always has the speaker as the subject. Examples of commissives: a promise, an oath, a guarantee.

Expressions have the purpose of expressing a certain psychological state of the speaker (feeling of gratitude, regret, joy, etc.) as a reaction to the state of affairs defined within the proposition. The direction of correspondence between the expression and reality is not important for them, because the state of affairs serving as a reason for the expressive act (what we congratulate, for which we thank or apologize, etc.) is not the main content, but the premise of such a speech act – its presupposition. Expressionists are especially characterized by phraseological means of expression – speech clichés specific to each language.

The fifth illocutionary class – declarations – differs from the other four in the parameter of connection with extra-linguistic institutions and the specificity of correspondence between a statement and reality that follows from this fact: by declaring (declaring) some state of affairs as existing, the speech act of declaration thereby makes it exist in the real world. Examples of declarations are appointment to a post, declaration of war or truce, excommunication, knighting, admission to a party, naming a person or an institution, etc. [8, pp. 125–131].

The choice of linguistic means and speech tactics of influence in political discourse is due to the complex interaction of external and internal factors, the characteristics of the communicative situation, the characteristics of the audience, the planned goals and the power of influence. Political rhetoric is characterized by a particular expressiveness, emotionality, theatricality, striving for compactness on the one hand and semantic depth of speech formulations on the other, which is manifested in the use of bright figurative nominations, figures of speech, political terms, propaganda slogans, etc.

The task of the composition of modern political discourse, together with the set of lexical and syntactic means, is to attract the attention of the audience, motivate its choice and prepare it for the perception of political information. It has been established that the text of political discourse clearly represents the culture of the people in which the particular text functions. Its lexical and syntactic features, as well as speech strategies (tactics of opposition, repetition, political metaphor) help the politician to speak expressively and achieve the goal.

Thus, we have considered the main strategies and tactics used in political discourse to influence the electorate. A politician's success in the struggle for power and voter support depends to a large extent on the competent choice of speech means. All of the above principles are applicable and most effective, because the purpose of political discourse is to create in the addressee the desired presupposition, and therefore both explicit and implicit speech acts are purposefully applied.