Means of emphasis in political television discourse: the core-periphery distinction

The article discusses the functioning of accentuators (means of emphasis) in political television discourse and their core-periphery distinction. Accentuators are defined as language, speech, and nonverbal means that accentuate fragments of speech being the most significant from the author’s point of view. An accentuator is recognized as core or peripheral depending on two factors: its being intended for semantic emphasis and the frequency of its use in a specific type of speech. Core accentuators are divided into three groups. The center of the core of the accentuation category includes the most emphasis-targeted and frequent means of emphasis - logical and emphatic sentence stress as well as gestural stress (baton gestures). Less emphasis-targeted core units are represented by lexical-semantic emphasis, hypophora, a performative utterance, inversion, an emblematic gesture ‘attention’, and expressive vocabulary. Core units that are least intended for emphasis include lexical repetitions, some modal particles, and adverbs of degree and measure. Peripheral means of emphasis are language, speech, and non-verbal units that are contextual and occasional. They are divided into two groups: the close periphery (introductory and parenthetical constructions, illustrative gestures, some modal particles, emblematic gestures, parallel syntax, direct and free indirect speech, some facial expressions, etc.) and the far periphery (comparatives, pauses, interjections, some structures of a complex sentence and supra-phrasal units, etc.). The research reveals some significant regularities in the use of accentuators: there are patterns of compatibility of their certain types; the usage frequency of accentuators depends on functional and semantic types of speech or the personal characteristics of communicants.