Argumentative potential of persuasivness in political discourse and text

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Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas

Argumentative potential of persuasivness in political discourse and text

Tetiana Sawchouk PhD, Associate Professor,

Associate Professor of the Department of Philology and Translation

Ukraine

Summary

Over the past decades, linguistics drastically expanded the scope of its research, including all aspects of language activity and language interaction. The attention of linguists has shifted from minimal linguistic units to the maximum - the text (discourse), which has been studying in interaction with pragmatic factors. Political discourse becomes an example of demonstrating the natural development of not only of the language itself, but also of the society, culture and religion of which it is a part, as it represents the interaction of political representatives and the audience, as well as those means of persuasion that are used in the process of their communication. In the linguistic literature, the term "political discourse" includes the forms of communication in which at least one of its components applies to policy areas: the subject, addressee or content of the message, i.e. all forms of political communication institutions and individuals, as well as any communication with reference to political question. In linguistics, there is also a distinction between written and oral discourses. However, the concepts of discourse and text are not identical, but complement each other, their relationships can be interpreted as the relationship of a part to the whole. As a material embodiment of the discourse, the text can be considered from the point of view different language levels: phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic. Applying this approach to a political text makes it possible to determine the linguistic means and elements of language through which it serves a tool of influence on the (mass) recipient. Thus, the analysis of the language of politics is, in fact, the detection of ways of language manipulation signs to achieve specific political goals.

Key words: discourse, text, politics, argumentative potential, communication.

Резюме

Аргументативный потенциал убедительности в политическом дискурсе и тексте

Татьяна Савчук

Кандидат филологических наук, доцент,

доцент кафедры филологии и перевода Ивано-Франковского национального технического университета нефти и газа, Украина

За последние десятилетия лингвистика резко расширила сферу своих исследований, включив в нее все аспекты языковой деятельности и языкового взаимодействия. Внимание лингвистов сместилось с минимальных языковых единиц на максимальную - текст (дискурс), который изучается во взаимодействии с прагматическими факторами.

Политический дискурс становится примером, демонстрирующим естественное развитие не только самого языка, но и общества, культуры и религии, частью которых он является, поскольку он представляет собой взаимодействие политических представителей и аудитории, а также те средства убеждения, которые используются в процессе коммуникации. их общение. В лингвистической литературе термин "политический дискурс" включает формы коммуникации, в которых по крайней мере один из его компонентов относится к сферам политики: предмет, адресат или содержание сообщения, т.е. все формы политической коммуникации, институты и отдельные лица, а также любая коммуникация, связанная с политическими вопросами. В лингвистике также существует различие между письменным и устным дискурсами. Однако понятия дискурса и текста не тождественны, а дополняют друг друга, их взаимоотношения можно интерпретировать как отношение части к целому. Как материальное воплощение дискурса, текст может рассматриваться с точки зрения различных языковых уровней: фонетического, морфологического, лексического, синтаксического. Применение такого подхода к политическому тексту позволяет определить языковые средства и элементы языка, с помощью которых он служит инструментом воздействия на (массового) реципиента. Таким образом, анализ языка политики - это, по сути, выявление способов манипулирования языковыми знаками для достижения конкретных политических целей.

Ключевые слова: дискурс, текст, политика, аргументативный потенциал, коммуникация.

In order to characterize a political text as such, it will be appropriate to first define what text and discourse are, to consider the complex deep connections that exist between these two concepts. For linguistics, the text is the primary and most valuable object of research, because, as R. Hartmann notes [1], language becomes visible precisely in the text. Without the text, in its broadest sense, language research is basically impossible.

Usually, a text (Latin textus - fabric, weave) is understood as a set of sentences ordered in a certain way, united by a common communicative task. Its main properties are integrity and coherence (cohesion, coherence), the latter of which is achieved thanks to grammatical (modality, peculiarities of verb forms, etc.) and lexical (repetition, synonyms, etc.) means of text coherence, homogeneity of vocabulary, coreference (subordination of all elements to one theme, which ensures the functioning of the text as a system), theme-rhematic sequence (thematic part is placed in the position of the title, and the entire sequential text acts as a qualitative text dominant (rheme)), etc., which can be traced already during the production of the text due to its integrity, which characterizes the text as a meaningful unity.

If we talk about the nature of the content of the text, then it depends, first of all, on the communicative intentions of the subject of its creation (lat. intendere - to intend, to plan), which are conveyed in the text with the help of: changing the order of words, intonation variations, the choice of vocabulary, special graphic tools (punctuation, underlining, highlighting), etc. Accordingly, the addressee's task is to unravel the above-mentioned intentions, which, first of all, means understanding the language units, which are used by the addresser, and the way they are combined together. An important role here is played by the so-called presuppositions, which are considered as the general fund of knowledge of the addresser and addressee of the text. In addition, the modern linguistics of the text cannot fail to take into account the psycholinguistic aspects of its creation and perception, which brings its pragmatic aspect and conditions of effective communication to the forefront of research. From the point of view of psycholinguistics, the text is considered as a unit of communication, a product of speech, determined by the needs of communication.

Like text, discourse is a complex phenomenon that still does not have a clear interpretation. The ambiguity of this term allows the use of discursive analysis in various humanitarian disciplines, the subject of which directly or indirectly involves the study of the functioning of language - linguistics, semiotics, sociology, etc. In general, discourse (lat. discursus - movement, circulation; conversation) can be considered as a language, a process of speech activity, a way of speaking, and therefore, it is a somewhat broader concept than a text, since it acts simultaneously as a process of speech activity and as its result (text). Discourse, as Serazhym K. S. defines it [3], is a text immersed in a situation of communication, or vice versa - communication through a text.

In their works, linguists interpret and reveal the nature of the relationship between text and discourse in different ways. So, for example, in the works of A. Greimas and J. Courtes [4], text and discourse are not equated, but opposed, when the text is a statement realized in discourse. The interpretation of the text as a "more material" phenomenon than discourse is explained by the fact that earlier the Latin word "discursus" was used to denote an action, while "textus" was used to denote its result or the name of the subject. J. Courtes [5] understands discourse as a multi-component integrity, which is determined by specially selected and combined linguistic units in a certain way, which is the basis of "speech acts (acts of communication) as parts of a certain global whole".

As noted by P. Charaudeau [6], who considers the text as the resultative and the discourse as the procedural aspect of language activity, the text is "an embodiment, a visual representation of another language"; "unrepeatable, single result of the process, which depends both on the speaker and on the conditions of language production". In general, discourse, according to P. Charaudeau [6], appears as a sum of such elements as "utterance" and "communicative situation".

Solovjova T. O. [7] considers the discourse as a connected text combined with extralinguistic, pragmatic, sociocultural, psychological and other factors, as any language immersed in life. Since discourse is a phenomenon that is studied in the current time regime, i.e. as it is produced and developed, and in its analysis it is necessary to take into account all social, cultural and pragmatic factors. Therefore, the term "discourse", in contrast to the term "text", is not applied to ancient and other texts whose connections with real life are not directly traceable. But the last limitation is not essential due to the presence of the past in the present and its ability to determine the events of both the present and the future, thus the discourse is a set of written and oral texts in this or that language within a certain culture for the entire history of their existence [8]. Therefore, discourse is a set of written or oral texts and situations in which they are created and actualized.

Shcherbakova O. L. [9] interprets discourse as a cognitive process associated with the production of language, the creation of a linguistic work, and the text as the final result of the process of linguistic activity, which has a certain finished (fixed) form. At the current stage of the development of linguistic research, the concepts of discourse and text are not identified, since they only complement each other, and are not completely interchangeable. So, on the one hand, these two concepts are opposed by the parameter: dynamics of communication (discourse) / statics of the object (text), on the other hand, their mutual relations are interpreted as the relation of a part to a whole.

In the work, we consider the text from the point of view of the latter - as a component of discourse, since, being a material embodiment of discourse, which can be studied from the point of view of different language levels (phonetic, morphemic, lexical, morphological, syntactic), where each linguistic unit used by the author in texts carry additional semantic loads, which allows scientists to determine those linguistic characteristics and elements of language, thanks to which it serves as a means of influencing and persuading the (mass) recipient, the text, nevertheless, is not a mandatory element of any political communication , especially taking into account debates - a genre of political discourse, where statements are produced by speakers in real time without the use of previously prepared texts. When we talk about the argumentative potential of the text in political discourse, the impact on the audience in the field of politics, we mean, first of all, changing people's opinion, overcoming differences between the views of subjects (addressers) and objects (addressees) of the political arena. Although many people associate the word "argument" with fierce disputes or conflicts, in fact, argumentation involves a rational substantiation or refutation of an expressed opinion, conviction of the acceptability or unacceptability of a certain point of view.

Frans Hendrik van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst define the specifics of argumentation as follows [10]: 1) targeting a certain audience, that is, the effectiveness of argumentation models is revealed only in relation to those people who need to be convinced of something; 2) rational standards for accepting arguments are equated to those that prevail in a certain society, that is, an argument is considered acceptable if it is approved by the audience; 3) the effectiveness of argumentation depends on the context of its use. And although argumentation is a phenomenon of language use, it cannot be adequately considered only within linguistics, since the most important element of any political address is, first of all, the target audience with its cognitive, emotional and psychological attitudes. And therefore, the study of the political text goes beyond the scope of one discipline (linguistics).

As a rule, when analyzing a political text (discourse), several approaches are used. So, for example, psychology and linguistics (psycholinguistics) focus on the analysis of the process of language influence and linguistic means of language description in the process, where special attention is paid to the communicative and linguistic features of texts and their structural and compositional characteristics; as a result of linguistic and semiotic approaches, we get a descriptive study of texts; critical linguistics and political science mainly focus on clarifying the mechanisms and methods of possible manipulation of public opinion, etc. The main approach to the study of the political text remains the communicative one, since only in communication are all the qualities of the language realized, starting from its sound and ending with the complex mechanism of unambiguously highlighting the content of specific speech acts [11]. The specificity of this approach is, first of all, that the text is considered as a discourse, as a linguistic statement, which involves a subject (addresser, speaker), an object (addressee, listener) and the presence of the first intention to influence the second with the help of linguistic means, because the text exists only in the process of its meaningful perception or in the process of its production. The written text is also considered as a kind of dialogue, a process of interaction between the reader and the author of the text. A text, especially a political one, is an instrument of influence and regulation of the interlocutor's mental activity, since its very nature is subject to this function. From a pragmatic point of view (this aspect of communication should be considered as a category for evaluating the effectiveness of the text, which includes both intralinguistic and extralinguistic factors that contribute to the achievement of a specific goal inherent in any communicative act [12]), a political text is designed not just to convey factual information, but to exert linguistic influence on the audience in order to obtain a specific reaction in return. It is able to exert an ideological, political, economic and organizational influence on the evaluation, opinion and behavior of people, and therefore is an integral element of any political act, the essence of which is to direct the audience in the direction of the desired policy or political force. When creating a political text, the author has the opportunity to choose those linguistic means and forms that, on the one hand, will fully and adequately reflect his idea, and on the other hand, will correspond as much as possible to the personality type of the recipients, their interests, needs and attitudes, that is, to use those arguments which in the right context will be rationally perceived by the mass audience and will overcome differences in the understanding of this or that political situation. political discourse linguistic phonetic

References

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