Linguistic strategies applied to create a positive image of a politician

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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

School of Foreign Languages

Linguistic strategies applied to create a positive image of a politician

Field of study: Linguistics

Polina Igorevna Khordykova

Introduction

Forming a positive image of a politician is of particular significance in today's world, as it is a key factor of success in a political race in democratic societies. Politicians, alongside experts' teams and image-makers, are in active search for means of enhancing their image in order to seize and hold political power. One of the most effective ways in achieving this goal is taking control over discourse with the help of diverse linguistic strategies.

Since the end of 20th century, there has been a noticeable shift in linguistic studies, and many scholars began to point out the necessity to go beyond the analysis of pure linguistic phenomena and abstract structures of language, giving the priority to interdisciplinary research of language in context - discourse studies (Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, Wodak, 1989, etc). Having appeared in 1990s, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has become one of the most prominent and influential approach in discourse studies and political linguistics. It sees discourse as a social practice and recognizes its dialogical nature, that means discourse is both socially conditioned and constitutive (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, Van Dijk, 2008). Never before had the authorities such a vast apparatus of cognitive and social impact on individuals, which democratic and neoliberal ideologies cannot combat, as the current practice of political decision-making reveals (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 225). Illegitimate political, economic and military decisions undergo the process of legitimization through discursive manipulative strategies, distorting the reality and overshadowing minority, dissenting or critical voices. The reality adopts newly generating meanings, and dominant groups try to control this process of modeling the reality (Maslova, 2008, Sinelnikova, 2009). CDA aims at deconstructing power abuse and manipulation of public consciousness, dominant groups resort to, through systematic investigation of semiotic data, such as texts, talks and visuals (Wodak & Meyer, 2015). It brings the critical tradition of social analysis into language studies and attempts to influence power relations by enhancing the role of intellectual thought in the communicative space of the globalized and information-oriented world.

Although there are relatively new studies that focus on the qualitative analysis of multimodal texts and visuals, verbal elements remain the main diagnostic tool to examine power abuse that offers extensive material for research. Linguistic strategies used to create a positive image of a politician may be traced on an expression plane and a content plane. An expression plane relates to all kinds of stylistic devices and rhetoric means, that help to strengthen ideas and support politicians' arguments from a purely linguistic perspective, while a content plane deals with meanings driven not only by language, but by the context of a communicative event, the social climate, cultural features and the history of the people, etc. It is complex interconnected relations between the material form and the semiotic (Gee & Handford, 2013, p. 22). Therefore, we should consider several dimensions, while analyzing a communicative event in CDA: we examine text itself and its sociocultural environment that in turn drives discourse practices and is further reinforced by them.

Despite a steadily growing number of works on CDA and language employed by politicians, not many of them focus on Russian texts and the process of image formation of a politician separately, attempting to explain the correlation between sociocultural dimension and purely linguistic phenomena, such as stylistic devices and particular lexical choices. However, it seems to be an important area for CDA, as political elites in Russia, namely the country's leader Vladimir Putin, managed to seize the power and hold it over the past 20 years, during which he ranked significantly high on approval ratings. Although support for the President has declined in recent years, he is still in power and able to control the discourse. Thus, it seems relevant to observe linguistic strategies, applied by him to produce texts that aim to be well perceived by his audience and enhance his positive image, and to analyze them within a framework of CDA, finding sociocultural drivers behind their production. I expect the current research will expand the area of CDA and shed light on the linguistic strategies employed by Putin in the image-making process in last 2019-2020 years.

Methods

This research is done within the framework of CDA and employs qualitative methods. They include components of semantic and pragmatic interpretation of text, as well as contextual analysis. Sociocultural dimensions within Hofstede's theory are used to find out and explain linguistic strategies applied to reach specific goals in the struggle for power and holding control over people's mind. The discourse is characterized as continual, but at the same time it is discrete and, thus, we can single out separate units such as particular communicative events, that took place in 2019-2020 and are available in media. The selected texts, namely 2020's interview to TASS News Agency and 2019's press conference, are voluminous and indicative for the purposes of the research. They are designed specifically for the mass audience, but have a higher level of spontaneity due to its form of dialogical verbal engagements. The role of cultural and social issues in decoding their meaning is identified applying of Hofstede's theory and considering social and historical context.

Chapter 1. Formation of an image of a politician from the linguistic perspective

Political linguistics and discourse studies as fields concerned with the study of language employed by politicians to influence their audience

The study relates to the field of political linguistics, which was the first attempt to study political discourse (Wodak & Meyer, 2015), and expands further to apply multidisciplinary methods from the area of Critical Discourse Studies, Functional Linguistics and Cultural Studies.

Political linguistic is a branch of linguistics that rests at the intersection of language or discourse and political sphere of life.

Political linguistics is fully characterized by such features of modern linguistics. (Budaev & Chudinov, 2007, p. 90). They are:

1) multidisciplinarity (using the methodologies of various sciences),

2) anthropocentrism (a linguistic personality becomes a reference point for the study of linguistic phenomena),

3) expansionism (a tendency to expand the field of linguistic research),

4) functionalism (learning language within its context, in action, in discourse, in the exercise of its functions) and

5) a tendency to explain (giving explanations to the facts, rather than describing them).

Initially considered a kind of stylistic or rhetorical research, political linguistics started its formation as a separate branch of science after the First World War. Significant works of this period include studies of Walter Lippmann, a famous journalist and media critic. Lippman authored the concept of “agenda-setting process”, that is, highlighting some issues in political communication by the press and hindering others, bouncing from topic to topic, never fully explaining the facts and relations between them. Lippmann was first to apply content analysis to examine how people form their opinion and attitudes towards ongoing political events. The results of his 1920's study indicated the complexity of being unbiased and objective towards the political events covered by media among average American people, because press coverages under the analysis were written from the perspective which was strongly against the decisions of anti-monarchical far-left faction. The research proved that this bias affected the perceptions of people who got information from these materials in The New York Times. (Weingast, 1950).

Further research in the media sphere includes works by Harold Lasswell, an American political scientist and a specialist in comminications. He focused on the structural features of communication and the tools that enable to shape interpretations of texts. Lasswell developed his five-questions model of communication. Proceeding from this model, in 1949 Harold Lasswell and Nathan Leites employed quantitative methods studying semantics of political texts.

Lasswell's contemporary, Paul Lazarsfeld, continued working on the study of the effects that communication may produce. He developed the two-step flow of communication model, having studied cognitive effects produced by media. The concept describes most people as opinion followers who are influenced not directly by mass media, but by opinion leaders who interpret mass media texts themselves and put it in a larger context (Lazarsfeld, 1940). He drew this conclusion from the results he gained, having interviewed a focus group of 600 people. The outcomes of the study indicated that the media promotion did not actually contributed to the political campaign, because an insignificant number of respondents changed their views and attitudes towards the candidates due to the media promoting texts.

Victor Klemperer (1947) and Rolf Sternberger (1957) preceded the birth of critical linguistic research, as they studied the official language of the Third Reich and the way it manipulated people's mind, explaining its effectiveness.

Pioneering studies by Harold Lasswell, Paul Lazarsfeld, Victor Klemperer also gave rise to the modern theory of political metaphor, as well as to further studies of political communication and manipulation in both totalitarian and democratic societies (Budaev & Chudinov, 2012, Musolff, 2004, Howe, 1988).

Modern political linguistics is engaged in the general issues of political communication. For example, it analyzes its differences from communication in other spheres, studies specific genres within political communication (Cap, 2013). It also addresses the problems of the idiostyle of individual politicians and political parties, and examines the strategies and techniques applied in political communication (Kreis, 2017, Lillian, 2008). Moreover, political linguistics studies vocabulary and phraseology of political texts (Budaev & Chudinov, 2012), and the use of various figurative means in them (Burgers, Konijn & Steen, 2016, Sharifian, 2009), as well as political concepts within different cultures, addressing the problems of understanding the political realities of a state by citizens of other states.

Political linguistics is engaged with communications in the political sphere of life, which include creating incentives for people to get emotionally involved in the political decisions, to form their loyalty to particular ideas promoted by politicians and to get ready for actions necessary for advocating these ideas. This activity aims at developing public consent and helps to make and justify socio-political decisions in a diverse society. Almost every member of society with an access to political discourse (namely, to the debates, press conferences given by politicians) becomes an addressee of political communication. Under the influence of this discourse, they participate in decision-making processes through voting and other mechanisms. That is why, political linguistics is concerned not only with transmitting political information, but also with the ways addressees perceive and evaluate this information. In this regard, it is crucial to distinguish the discourse studies, which have become a separate direction in studying political communication and the impact it has on society.

Defining the concept of political discourse

Recent decades have witnessed an increasing interest in studying political discourse (Fairclough, 2009, Chilton & Schдffner, 2002, Wodak, 2009, Van Dijk, 2008, Angermuller, 2014, etc). However, defining the term `political discourse' itself is a controversial issue for the researchers. In linguistic literature, political discourse is seen as a multidimensional phenomenon that can be defined in a narrow or wide sense. On the one hand, as politics can be defined by the activities of the government and its parliamentary opposition, which work in the pursuit to seize and hold the power through elections, parliamentary procedures, propaganda, etc, political discourse respectively can be narrowed to a form of communication inherent to primary political actors. On the other hand, political discourse might also comprise media covering political events, organizations of a civil society, public institutions such as schools and universities, whose policy may reflect official ideology to some extent. Some scholars consider almost all types of discourses as political (Shapiro, 1981), since general concepts of political domain such as power, control, domination, conflict, etc appear in various types of discourses (Wilson, Schiffrin, Tannen& Hamilton, 2001, Bayley, 2005).

The current research employs the narrow definition of political discourse, following Teun van Dijk (1998) who refers to political discourse as a restricted type of discourse which is identified by its actors, namely politicians, and enacts power. It means that political discourse in its narrow sense takes place in formal contexts where a politician fulfills their function of forming public opinion, attitudes and will, while giving press conferences, interviews, president speeches, ministerial speeches, election speeches, etc.

Understanding political discourse from this perspective, it is recognized it as a complex phenomenon with a pragmatic dominant, which is seizing and holding political power in order to make political ideas and interests a social practice. (Schaffner, 1996). Political communication aims at having a direct or indirect influence on the distribution of power (through elections, appointments, forming of public opinion, etc.) and its exercise (adoption of laws, publication of decrees, etc.). Thus, political communication not only reflects the existing political reality, but also may distort and transform this reality.

Political discourse practices resonate with the reality to different extents, and modelling of specific new reality becomes the primary goal of politicians, their image-makers and speechwriters (Sinel'nikova, 2009).

This element of irreality allows to consider political discourse and manipulation that occurs within it as a language game. Maslova understands this language game as an instrument to generate new meanings (Maslova, 2008).

Political discourse and its relation to the power issue

The issue of power and especially power abuse is central to political discourse, as this discourse is produced in the quest for political power. Discourse is capable of producing sociopolitical domination. Most scholars agree on the idea that discourse reinforces attitudes within a society and has a dialogical, mutually shaping nature (Chilton &Schдffner, 2002, Van Dijk, 2008, Wodak, 2009, Fairclough, 2009). This dialogical, mutually shaping nature means that discourse is both constitutive and socially conditioned. It constitutes knowledge, attitudes and behavior. Political discourse in general aims at persuading people and shaping their opinion, rather than at simply informing them. Thus, participants of political discourse use various strategies to form people's opinion in a way that would meet their needs. As it is noted by Wodak, discursive manipulation is instrumental in gaining these aims as it maintains ideological justifications of politicians' actions, as well as attitudes towards candidates during elections or policy makers willing to hold the political power and reproduce the social status quo (Wodak, 2015).

Michel Foucault first introduced the conjunction of discourse and power. He pointed out that dominant groups maintain relationships of power through hidden structures manifested in language. Moreover, various actors who participate in building and maintaining such relationships might be unaware of unfolding processes (Foucault, 1972). Thus, dominant groups form ideology that appear to be neutral and do not challenge assumptions existing in society. Discursive practices might have ideological effects and lead to inequality in power relations (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, Van Dijk, 2008). According to Mullins (1972), one of the most crucial features of an ideology is having power over people's cognition. Teun van Dijk (2002) supports the idea and refers to ideologies as worldviews that constitute “social cognition”. He argues that political discourse should always be analyzed within several dimensions, namely cognition, society, as well as history and culture. Dominant groups, seizing power over cognition, provide guidance to individuals' evaluations and attitudes, restraining people from thinking of alternatives to the existing order of dominant ideology (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997).

The way suppressed dominated groups may resist to such power abuse is connected with CDA aiming to participate in the process of emancipating of people from the adverse ideological effects through producing and transmitting critical knowledge. (Wodak & Meyer, 2015, Van Dijk, 2008).

Critical discourse analysis as a way to reveal manipulative strategies that are applied in the image formation

Critical discourse analysis continues on the course of social analysis and the critical tradition, incorporating it into language studies. Its fields of interest go beyond studies of discourse in terms of linguistics and include social elements of power, ideology, identity, intuitions and so on.

Critical Discourse Studies aims at deconstructing power abuse through systematic investigation of semiotic data (texts, talks and visuals) and at having an impact on the relations of power in a society (Wodak & Meyer, 2015, Fetzer & Lauerbach, 2007).

The development of CDS as a school started in the 1990s when Van Dijk launched the journal “Discourse and Society”. Since then CDS has become an acknowledged discipline in linguistics with ample visible outcomes and institutionalized in many countries all over the world. Nowadays works on CDS are published in Critical Discourse Studies, The Journal of Language and Politics, Discourse and Communication, Discourse and Society, Visual Communication, CADAAD, etc.

Wodak and Meyer (2015) give an overview of modern directions within CDA, such as the discourse-historical approach adopted by Reisigl (2017), the sociocognitive approach represented by Van Dijk (2014), a dialectical-relational approach, where Fairclough (2009) is an important figure. Many modern scholars have integrated the analysis of semiotics of visuals and multimodal texts to CDA, adding a completely new dimension to the field (Jancsary, Hцllerer & Meyer, 2016). The current research is mainly centered around sociocognive approach, which deals with discourse cognitive structures, namely the shared social knowledge and the system of value. It helps to reveal the way a politician able to mediate between shared social cognition based on and their actual talks and texts in a complex process of accessing expectations of the recipients of information and its further reinforcement and transformation. Unlike the discourse-historical approach, it gives the opportunity to trace the construction of discursive reality through the study of cognitive elements in a synchronic way.

However, it is important to point out that being critical is an attitude researches choose, but not an explicit method with systematic and replicable procedure for description of the hidden structures and strategies of written, oral or multimodal fragments of discourse. (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 2). That is why, within all the above-mentioned approaches, there are diverse methods, both quantitative and qualitative, which Critical Discourse analysts can combine and apply with considerable flexibility.

CDA often uses analytical tools borrowed from Systematic Functional Linguistics. It is a functional approach, developed within Systematic Functional Linguistics (M. Halliday 1978, 1994) It sees language as a social interaction and tries to give explanations why one linguistic form is more appropriate for a particular communicative situation than another. Thus, a functional approach within political communication, focuses on linguistic choices of lexical and grammatical units as rhetorical means of persuasion and reaching specific goals in the struggle for power and control over people's mind. For instance, processes of legitimization of political agendas and actions and modes of taken-for-grantedness can be studied from this perspective by such scholars as Reyes (2011), Fetzer and Lauerbach (2007).

Forming a positive image: discursive strategies to maintain hegemonic power

Official genres employed by politicians are designed specifically for their audience and clearly show the ways politicians want to “present themselves, stage their work and `perform', and therefore how they like to be perceived by their various audiences” (Wodak, 2009, p. 163). According to Reyes (2011), this preparedness and authoritativeness contribute to legitimization of a politician's actions and agenda, and, thus, form their trustful and confident image. In his 2011's research, he decodes several linguistic strategies of legitimization applied in speeches given by American presidents in order to justify their agenda and maintain hegemonic power. An important contribution made by Reyes is decoding the process of othering and polarizing of “us” and “them”, good and evil, as the prevailing linguistic strategy to legitimize political decisions. Wodak and Meyer (2015) also refer to an emphasis on positive self-descriptions and negative other-descriptions as one of the key ideological structures of discourse involved in the production of power abuse. On an expression plane it can be traced through the usage of pronouns, namely inclusive “we” and exclusive “they”. Among other structures for legitimization and image building we can name legitimization through emotions (Bronstein, 2013, Reyes 2011), rationality (Reyes, 2011), a hypothetic future (Wodak, 2009, Reyes, 2011), the sense of nostalgia (Koteyko & Ryazanova-Clarke, 2009).

Reyes (2011) distinguishes the following strategies within the process of legitimizationя:

a) Legitimization through emotions

Reyes makes it clear how emotions may be capable of distorting cognitive understanding of reality and creating basis for manipulation and legitimization against people's initial will. In Reyes's research, most frequent triggers of an emotional mode are fear, sadness, insecurity, revenge. Giving the negative representations of the actors is instrumental in creating two sides of a given event, forming an Us-group with the speaker and the audience and negatively depicted Them-group. Linguistically it is achieved by “constructive strategies”, which are utterances that construct ingroups and outgroups.

In a similar vein, Reisigl and Wodak (2001) propose nomination and predicative strategies, which give answers to the methodological questions of how actors are linguistically named and referred to and what characteristics are attributed to them.

These strategies can act together with the strategies of intensification and mitigation, which are linguistically realized by hyperboles or litotes, tag questions, indirect speech acts, verbs of feeling and thinking, etc. All these strategies are relevant for the ideological structures of discourse, such as polarization with an emphasis on positive self-descriptions and negative other-descriptions, identification with the group, activities through which ideological groups are identified and norms and values they are built on (Wodak & Meyer, 2015, pp. 73-74).

b) Legitimization through a hypothetical future

Having investigated interconnections between past, present and future in social cognition and discourse, Reyes concludes that a hypothetical future, linguistically expressed through conditional structures and modalization, helps to justify political actions in present, to replace arguments based on facts with imaginary scenarios and to reinforce shared beliefs and patterns.

Other scholars agree that politicians tend to integrate past experiences, present events and visions of the future to trigger a specific shared attitude and evaluation of events and to provide guidance to action (Wodak & Meyer, 2015, p. 13), as well as have specific emotive effects such as the sense of nostalgia (Koteyko & Ryazanova-Clarke, 2009).

c) Legitimization through rationality

Rationality is employed as a social construct in Reyes' study. He refers to it as a rightfulness based on morals and values distinctive within a culture. Results of Reyes's study show how rationality expressed in analyzed texts is culturally bound in particular to American society.

Rationalization legitimization is also distinguished as a distinct type of legitimization strategy by Van Leeuwen and Wodak, who examine theoretical rationalizations and instrumental rationalization in discourse over immigration control (1999).

d) Voices of expertise

Legitimization through rationality can be further developed by appealing to experts. In this regard, Reyes found out such markers as reported verbs in indirect speech or explicit quoting in direct speech.

Voices of expertise are correlation with so-called authorization legitimization which is legitimization by reference to the institutionalized authority, as it is stated by Van Leeuwen and Wodak: “the answer to the implicit or explicit question `Why is it so?' is essentially `Because I say so'” (Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999).

e) Altruism

Another strategy of legitimization that Reyes highlights relates to altruism, that is, showing how political actions are beneficial to the community and driven by common good, rather than personal interests.

Legitimization through altruism proposed by Reyes may be referred to a more complex strategy of moral evaluations, earlier proposed by Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999). Moral evaluations try to access value systems and may be used in both positive self-representations and negative representation of Others. Delegitimization strategies are aimed at giving negative presentation of the opposition through blaming, attacking the moral character and rationale of the opponents, while in legitimization strategies a politician demonstrates the awareness of the addressee's wants and needs, boasts about own performance, etc.

Russia

Despite an increased interest in critical discourse studies and language employed by politicians, not many of them focus on Russian texts and aim at getting a more holistic view on the formation of a positive image of a politician, considering mutually shaping nature of discourse, based on sociocultural dimension of a society, within which this discourse is produced. Despite there are some studies of discursive strategies in Putin's speeches (Koteyko and Ryazanova-Clarke, 2009, Pavkoviж, 2017), they mostly focus on particular aspects, rather than the whole process of linguistic formation of an image. For example, Koteyko and Ryazanova-Clarke (2009) study how “path and building metaphors”, as well as allusions to the communist past and a discursive practice of delegitimization based on the semantic field of perestroika, contribute to an image of Putin as a strong ruler, giving critical explanations based on sociocultural dimensions. However, the study is narrowed to only one type of metaphors and leaves behind other linguistic strategies.

Pavkoviж (2017) touches on the issue of Russian national identity and unity and examines Putin's strategy of sacralization of Crimea through appeal to emotions and citizens' affective state but focuses narrowly on sacralization strategy from the perspective of rhetoric. Moreover, his study does not center around Putin's image, but rather shows how this strategy may be employed by different politicians for nationalistic purposes.

There are also some interesting critical studies of discourse in Putin's era in the domain of media (Hutchings & Rulyova, 2009) and education (Liсбn, 2010, Tsyrlina-Spady & Stoskopf, 2016, 2017), which comment on decline in media freedom and various propaganda tools and manipulative strategies, but these studies contribute to the field of CDA, employing the wide definition of political discourse.

Filinskiy's doctoral dissertation (2002) makes a major contribution to linguistic features of Putin's speeches and can be especially useful for further diachronic studies of formation of the president's image. Yet, it does not provide information for recent years of his presidency.

My study aims at extending the area of CDA of Putin's speeches and fill these gaps.

Chapter 2. Discursive strategies for the formation of the image of the President and their linguistic realizations in speeches given by Vladimir Putin

Dialogical verbal engagements such as interviews and press-conferences have lower level of preparedness and reflect the way a politician presents themselves and transforms the discursive reality in a form of the discussion. In order to be effective and contribute to the purpose of holding the power, construction of the discursive reality should access expectations of the target audience, which are based on its cognitive structures such as values, beliefs, prejudices and go in line with national cultural value system. In other words, the reality which is being constructed by a politician should be in accordance with the discursive reality of the recipient to the highest extent possible to have a starting point and ability to transform it in a direction needed by the dominant group.

Structures of legitimization and delegitimization respond to social cognition shared by a community, meaning that there are certain ideologically shaped `sociocultural conceptualizations' (Silverstein, 2004) which can be addressed to and used to gain people's approval and support. In the current research, I aim to find sociocultural grounds for specific linguistic choices in Putin's speeches, given to reach the audience and enhance his image of a strong leader, applying Hofstede's theory of cultural dimensions. Hofstede (1991) distinguishes power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism and masculinity vs. femininity, which reflect Russian national identity framed by social and historical context of Putin's presidency. Russia's scores on each dimension can be seen in the table given in Appendix 3.

I have conducted a qualitative and interpretative analysis of the chosen texts from the perspective of CDA. The analysis of relationship between three dimensions of this event: text, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice.

Texts may be produced in written or oral form, and may include visuals, as well, giving way to multimodal discourse analysis as a separate direction in discourse studies. Although modern critical discourse studies expand from a traditional text-based approach and include nonverbal elements such as visuals, text remains the primary diagnostic tool to explore mechanisms of power and manipulative discursive strategies, which I addressed in my research. As I have already mentioned, current research addresses Vladimir Putin's dialogical verbal engagements: 2020's interview to TASS Agency and 2019's press conference, both attached in Appendix 1 and 2 respectively.

Discourse practice is the process of text production and consumption. It is closely interconnected with sociocultural practice, that is, social and cultural goings-on, which the communicative event is a part of. Discourse analysis aims at revealing various social and cultural characteristics in text and talk, exploring the sociopolitical context that shape discourse and participate in the construction of power structures.

Tools for the analysis are ideological structures of polarizing, identification, emphasis on positive self-descriptions and negative other-descriptions, activities, norms and values, expressed with the help of discursive strategies of legitimization and delegitimization through authorization, rationalization, moral evaluations given by nomination and predication strategies, intensifications of future scenarios (dramatization), as well as their linguistic realization and particular choices of expressive means and devices.

Positive self-descriptions

1. Authorization legitimization

This kind of legitimization is conducted by reference to authority (Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). It implies that a politician stands as an authoritative source.

The reference to authority in Putin's speeches under analysis contribute to adding to his image such characteristics as competence, professionalism and categorical leadership. Being parts of building a stereotypical image of a leader, these characteristics correlate with high score on Power Distance dimension (93), which deals with unequal distribution of power, acceptance of such situation by the society and the importance of status symbols. Realized through Putin's discourse, authorization legitimization establishes a strict hierarchy and vertically organized authority.

Utterance 1.

Я должен всегда держать не просто руку на пульсе, я должен держать их всех под напряжением -- тех, кто выполняет эти задачи. Поверьте мне... Да, нужно, чтоб потряхивало.

Utterance 2.

Андрей Ванденко. Никто не знал. А кто знал?

Владимир Путин. Я знал.

Андрей Ванденко. А ещё?

Владимир Путин. Разве этого недостаточно?

Utterance 3.

Когда я уж на них там цыкнул, тогда они деньги выделили на строительство кольцевой дороги вокруг Петербурга.

Utterance 4.

Да, угол зрения [у Кудрина] изменился, и глаз видит поотчётливей, потому что не боится, что что-то по этому глазу прилетит.

Utterance 5.

Андрей, ну послушайте меня!

Utterance 6.

Вы понимаете, Андрей, в чём дело, здесь главное -- не промахнуться. Очень опасное дело. Поэтому вот взять и рубануть сразу -- очень опасно, но оставлять так, как есть, невозможно.

Utterance 7.

Вы меня хотели, видимо, сбить… Но у Вас не получится.

Utterance 9.

Владимир Сафьянов. … Мне интересно, вы впервые ошиблись или имели что-то особенное?

Владимир Путин. Поймал. Уел. Действительно, Россия присоединилась к Парижскому соглашению.

The way the given utterances are organized is instrumental in understanding social statuses of participants of the communicative event. Social information is encoded within linguistic expressions which mark familiarity. These expressions include the use of the first name towards the journalist, who in contrast adheres to the use of the first name and the patronymic, addressing the President, which is more formal in the Russian language. Other examples contain strong language used towards the president's subordinate that sometimes may be considered offensive: cyknut' (to hush), po glazu priletit (to punch in the eye), potryahivalo (being rattled). It enhances the image of the speaker by meeting the expectations of the audience and their need for a national leader with distinct features of being authoritative and pushing.

2. Legitimization through rationality

Rationalization legitimization is legitimization by reference to either the utility of the social practice, to “the facts of life” (Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999, p. 105) or traditions (Reyes, 2011). This kind of legitimization strategy establishes a form of common sense.

1) Historically established order

In Putin's speeches this strategy is often linguistically realized through allusions to the history and historically established order. Advocating his agenda and policies, Putin accesses the underlying cultural value system and constructs an image of the great state invoking values of imperialistic nature through the allusions to the country's history and the choice of lexical units that denote unity. Here are some of the domains from which Putin takes the values of the great state, the great nation of the great history to legitimize his activities.

a) The Ukrainian issue

Utterance 1.

Андрей Ванденко. То, что мы теперь не друзья с Украиной, это потеря для нас?

Владимир Путин. Да. Конечно. Но я уже много раз говорил: я считаю, что мы один и тот же народ.

Андрей Ванденко. Украинцам это очень не нравится.

Владимир Путин. Не знаю, нравится это или нет, но, если посмотреть на реалии, это так и есть. Понимаете, до XI, XII, XIII века у нас не было никакой разницы в языке. И только в результате полонизации та часть украинцев, которая жила на территории, находившейся под властью Речи Посполитой, только где-то, по-моему, в XVI веке появились первые языковые различия.

Allusions to the past in the given utterance are often rooted not even in times of USSR, but rather those of Kievan Rus, more distant and mythologized. Putin strongly denies the domain of present time, current feelings and self-identification of another nation. Describing “the realities”, he revisits the situation in XI, XII, XIII centuries and appeals to the necessity of taking a retrospective view on the nation to talk about present and future.

Utterance 2.

А чтобы нам говорить про сегодняшний и про завтрашний, нужно знать историю, нужно знать, кто мы такие, откуда мы родом, что нас объединяет.

Justifications of the unity are also found in more recent times of ХIХ century's nationalism. Rationalization appeals to works of the founders of this movement, as in the following utterance.

Utterance 3.

И кстати говоря, отцы-основатели украинского национализма -- они же никогда не говорили, что нужно обязательно рассориться с Россией. Как это ни покажется странным, в их фундаментальных трудах ХIХ века написано, что Украина: а) она многонациональна и должна быть федеративным государством и б) выстроить обязательно хорошие отношения с Россией.

Linguistically, the idea of unity is highlighted by metaphors with strong emotional loading and semantic components of destruction and pain, as well as rhetoric questions.

Utterance 4.

Зачем нужно было разрушать единство Русской православной церкви?

Нет, надо было обязательно разрезать по живому. Зачем?

In other cases, antithesis emphasizes the idea of contrast between the unity and separation by parallel structures of the contrasted clauses, as it does in the Utterance 5.

Utterance 5.

И более того, ведь в современном мире объединение усилий даёт нам колоссальные конкурентные преимущества. И наоборот -- разъединение делает нас слабее.

b) The First World War and the feat of the Russian people

Особенно украинский фактор начал разыгрываться в преддверии Первой мировой войны австрийской спецслужбой. Почему? Это известное дело -- разделяй и властвуй. Это абсолютно понятная вещь.

Legitimization though the rationale is achieved by allusions to indisputable principles which are reinforced through fixed expressions, accessing the recipients' cognitive structures of national values, and discursive markers of credibility.

c) The Second World War and the feat of the Russian people

Советский Союз Советский Союз подвергся очень страшному, ужасному, непростительному нападению со стороны нацистской Германии, мы потеряли 27 миллионов человек, нет ни одной страны мира, которая понесла бы такую утрату. И если кто-то посмеет сделать что-то подобное, мы повторим.

The idea of the great nation with a unique history is enforced by the particular act of reference which appeals to the memory of the nation and its terrible loss in the War, highlighted by giving precise numbers and incomparable to other nations.

d) The figure of Alexander Nevskiy

Если лозунг, о котором Вы сказали, рассматривать именно с таких позиций, то достаточно вспомнить и Александра Невского: «Кто к нам с мечом придёт, от меча и погибнет».

The anthroponym used here is instrumental for the formation of the national worldview as it refers to the country's history and its heroic figure venerated by the people. Addressing this figure by a quotation, Putin legitimizes the present agenda through rationalization of historical traditions.

2) A rational choice in a difficult decision-making process

Under a specific cultural framework, political actors present their activities as rational (Reyes, 2011). It is done through an emphasis on the complexity of the process of decision-making, where a politician is presented as a person capable of weighting decisions thoughtfully and honestly, working hard and consulting the experts.

In Putin's discourse, these rational choices are often highlighted by frequent use of precise numbers and various discourse markers of credibility (such as it is a matter of fact, it is objective data, it is an obvious thing, it is a real fact) and by depicting the decision-making process as one that requires hard work and deep knowledge of the situation. It is in a strong correlation with discursive strategies of positive self-representation through boasting about the ingroup performance.

Utterance 1.

Владимир Путин. Или есть общая задача -- повышение продолжительности жизни, ну так она у нас увеличилась, и за этот год тоже. И это результат того, что снизилась смертность, и она снизилась заметно. Это реальный факт. Понимаете?

Андрей Ванденко. А по году убыль.

Владимир Путин. Что?

Андрей Ванденко. А по году убыль.

Владимир Путин. А по году убыль, потому что...

Андрей Ванденко. Причём солидная.

Владимир Путин. 260 тысяч, я знаю почти каждую цифру.

Андрей Ванденко. Не сомневаюсь.

Владимир Путин. И не сомневайтесь, потому что я этим занимаюсь каждый день. Это было понятно уже заранее. У нас, смотрите, какая ситуация. У нас количество школьников выросло и будет расти в ближайшие годы. Почему? Потому что в детородный возраст несколько лет назад, ну, лет семь -- десять назад вступило достаточно многочисленное поколение людей. А сейчас в детородный возраст вступило незначительное количество людей в результате двух падений: в 43-44-м годах и в середине 90-х. Эти две линии схлопнулись вниз, яма получилась. У нас просто меньше людей, которые в детородном возрасте находятся. Количество женщин от 20 до 29 лет сократилось на 4,5 миллиона человек, вот и всё. Это объективные данные.

Utterance 2.

Ну это не соответствует действительности. Это так, знаете, можно было бы кого-то другого назвать царём. Я же работаю каждый день, я не царствую. Царь -- это тот, кто сидит, сверху посматривает и говорит: вот прикажу, и там кое-что сделают. А сам только шапку примеряет и смотрится в зеркало. Я работаю каждый день.

Utterance 3.

Важно не то, чтобы люди знали, а чтобы реально чувствовали на себе. Вот расселение аварийного жилья -- мы сделали в разы больше, чем планировалось. И люди конкретные это почувствовали. Вот это очевидная вещь.

Utterance 4.

Ну и здесь мы тоже кое-чего делаем, всё-таки в этом рейтинге мирового банка Doing Вusiness мы, по-моему, уже 28-е место занимаем, продвинулись на порядок, просто на порядок. Это говорит о том, что всё-таки усилия государства здесь наращиваются и дают положительный результат. Количество инвестиций растёт.

An excellent performance and hard work are also highlighted by metaphors, which is a powerful mechanism of transmitting ideas and appealing to the nation's shared knowledge (Utterances 5, 6, 7).

Utterance 5.

Это не берётся с потолка и с неба, над этим надо работать, выделять соответствующие ресурсы, которые приходится отвлекать от решения других задач.

Utterance 6.

Но мы же не можем просто так сидеть и смотреть, как вода утекает.

Utterance 7.

Там не может быть никакого люфта и никакого времени на раскачку.

3. Moral evaluations of the ingroup. Altruism and glorification of the participants of the We-discourse.

Moral evaluation is another major type of legitimization distinguished by Leeuwen and Wodak (1999). Regarding positive self-descriptions, Reyes (2011) emphasizes altruism through which moral evaluations are given to legitimize political activities of the dominant group as a common good for an ingroup community driven by the concern of well-being of the society, rather than personal interests.

Positive hyperbolization and synecdoche (a simple man, referring to the community of the Ingroup) is a linguistic device used to solidarize the people with the state and cross out the dissenting voices from the We-discourse. It

Utterance 1.

И честный человек, который понимает, что он платит налоги по-честному, вбелую, вправе рассчитывать на то, чтобы дальше эти средства эффективным образом государством были потрачены. Но на первом этапе это не просто взять и выдрать деньги с человека, это организовать работу таким образом, чтобы и налогоплательщикам, и государству было комфортно друг с другом работать и чтобы было понятно, как это организовано, и любой человек мог бы это делать беспрепятственно, без лишних хлопот, без лишней нервотрёпки, и с тем, чтобы государство не подставляло его от раза к разу под какую-то статью.

Utterance 2.

Но всё равно, всё равно уже так просто, за колбасу не купишь человека.

An important aspect of forming We-discourse is building up solidarity with the ingroup members through explicit expressions of understanding and identification with the people.

Utterance 3.

Люди сравнивают не с тем, что было вчера, как было плохо вчера, а с тем, как должно быть хорошо завтра. И когда они не видят того, чего они хотят видеть, это вызывает разочарование. Честно говоря, я тоже так к этому отношусь.

Utterance 4.

Ну как же не имеет значения, это имеет значение. И больше того, люди очень чувствуют, когда инфляция растёт и цены поднимаются, реально люди чувствуют на своём кошельке. Другое дело, что наряду с таргетированием инфляции нужно, конечно, поднимать реальные доходы граждан, это совершенно очевидно. В условиях нашей структуры экономики это не так просто, но дополнительные усилия правительство точно обязано предпринять, вот сейчас мы это и обсуждаем.

Utterance 5.

Простой человек не обременён сознанием о том, что у него есть какие-то обязательства перед кем-то. Вот рядовой гражданин, он что говорит, то и думает, что думает, то и говорит. И ему нечего там оглядываться на то, что начальство скажет. Он вот то, что думает, то и говорит. И критические вещи говорят, и говорят от души то, что нравится или что не нравится. Я это очень ценю, на самом деле для меня это очень важно.

Utterance 6.

[Оппозиция] и системная нужна, и несистемная нужна. Я Вам даже говорю не как действующий президент, а просто как гражданин России. Но бардак нам не нужен. И шоу нам не нужно. Нам нужна серьёзная политическая деятельность.

Utterance 7.

Андрей Ванденко. То есть я правильно понял, торгаш -- жулик?

Владимир Путин. В сознании народа, мы же так говорим.

Андрей Ванденко. Я же про Вас.

Владимир Путин. Знаете, я же тоже часть этого народа.

Андрей Ванденко. Понятно.

Владимир Путин. Поэтому, если по-честному сказать, ну если по-честному, ну так… Мы все так думаем.

Utterance 8.

Больше всего верю настроению простых людей. Когда вот я общаюсь с людьми, прямой контакт когда есть, даже если непродолжительный, мне кажется, что я чувствую настроение людей. У меня это ощущение не притупилось, не забылось, и для меня это очень важно на самом деле. И я верю, люди очень искренние. Очень искренние люди у нас. Очень искренние, понимающие и откровенные.

The effect is maximized by allusions to the national values. In utterances 2, 7, 8 an emphasis is made on the value of honesty and non-material common good of the society. The leader presents himself as a part of the we-discourse who shares these values. The dichotomy between material and non-material values will be further discussed with regard to negative other-descriptions, where the Other is pursuing profit motive and is characterized as dishonest.

Moreover, Russia is a collectivist culture, according to Hofstede's theory and has a low score of 39 on the Individualism dimension. This aspect of Russian national value system is accessed by using personal pronoun “We” and addressing Russian people as a tied community, where the President feels being a part of it.

Identification with the nation goes in line with depicting the superiority of the country and heroization of its progress in the years of Putin's presidency. It refers to both tactic of boasting about one's performance (Cap, 2006) and glorification of the ingroup community and its achievements.

Utterance 1.

У нас в высокотехнологичной сфере, в атомной промышленности мы реально работаем очень хорошо. Мы реально обогнали всех, мы больше всех делаем в мире атомных блоков для электростанций.

Utterance 2.

Мы впервые с вами создали такие системы ударного наступательного оружия, которых нет в мире. Теперь они догоняют нас. Это вообще уникальная ситуация, такого не было никогда.

Utterance 3.

Хочу напомнить, что сейчас Россия - самый крупный поставщик пшеницы на мировой рынок, мы номер один. Мы обошли и Соединенные Штаты, и Канаду. У них больше производство, но они больше потребляют, а мы производим столько, что это позволяет нам занимать первое место на международном рынке по продаже пшеницы.

Linguistically, for these purposes the speaker uses intensifying adverbs and comparative constructions (we do more than others, we are the number one, etc).

Significant personal achievements can also be depicted explicitly contributing to heroic discourse. The effect is reinforced by the strategy of othering, which refer to vague figures of those who do not believe in success and end up being wrong.

Да, да, я придумал это. И один из коллег, которых приглашали туда, он сказал одному из, так сказать, коллег тоже: ничего у него не получится. На вопрос почему он говорит: всё начнётся с того, что ваши хоккеисты набьют морду математикам. Ничего подобного там не происходит… Вот «Сириус»… это я, кстати, и название-то придумал сам. Сидел-сидел, думал, как назвать, потом вспомнил, что самая яркая звезда на небосклоне -- это Сириус. Там самые яркие ребята собираются, вот поэтому и так предложил назвать. Вот это название прижилось.