Subjective Modality as a Means of Legitimizing Political Decisions in the Internet Discourse of Regional Politicians in Russia and Germany

Purpose. This article deals with the political Internet discourse of regional politicians of Germany and Russia – Markus Söder and Sergey Tsivilev and Internet comments to the politicians’ publications. The publications represent the policy decisions made by political actors during the period of the Covid-19. The main idea of the article is to determine the types of subjective modality used by politicians to legitimize their political decisions. It was also important to define the types of subjective modality in the texts of comments and to observe the responses of the addressee to see if the political decisions were legitimized. In our opinion, it is the subjective modality in the discourse of a political actor that can have a decisive role in legitimization of the political decisions. Results. The research is based on the online publications of regional politicians, as well as the comments to them posted on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram *) in the period from January 2020 to April 2022. The context analysis, the component analysis, the transformation method, the comparative method were applied for the research. It is found that the ontological modality is prevalent in the discourse of both political actors. The analysis of comments to politicians’ publications in social networks made it possible to assess the appropriateness of subjective modality means for legitimizing decisions in political Internet discourse. It has been disclosed that commentators legitimize politicians’ actions using deontic modality, caused by the institutional position of the politician.