СЕМАНТИКА СТРАТЕГИЙ И ТАКТИК ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ДИСКУРСА (НА ПРИМЕРЕ АНАЛИЗА ПРЕДВЫБОРНЫХ РЕЧЕЙ Х. КЛИНТОН И Д. ТРАМПА)

Introduction

The most important characteristic in the behavior of a political leader is communicative strategies. There is no generally accepted interpretation of the term “strategy” in linguistics. We understand strategy as a set of speech moves planned by a participant of communication aimed at achieving his goal. In addition to this term, the term “tactics” is also used, which is defined as a separate speech move within the strategy. In the article we tried to classify and analyze the speech strategies of foreign politicians based on the study of the language tools they use. We propose to base the classification on the ultimate goal, which we understand as being predicted, desired, as an idea of the result to be achieved in relation to the addressee.

Today the success of any politician, a party in elections largely depends on the effectiveness of the image formed, on the perception of its target audiences, on the popularity of their image. In other words, the formation of the necessary public opinion by the applicants for power is of particular importance.

The task of a political leader is to be able to win and retain the sympathy of the population, affection, understanding, support, trust, which is not always feasible with the help of a “correct” rational conviction based on logical proof. Very often, political leaders resort to various types of manipulative techniques or “tricks” used in discussions, to strategies and means of verbal influence on the feelings, emotions and subconscious of the addressee in order to create and maintain an appropriate image. This task is accomplished through a number of strategies [2, P. 25].

Strategies and tactics of modern American political discourse help politicians to arouse the audience’s interest in new ideas and are means of influencing public consciousness [5, P. 102].

It is obvious that the strategic repertoire of candidates for the US presidency is diverse, but the universal strategy used by all politicians without exception is the strategy of self-presentation. Self-presentation acts as an important part of communication skills used by various subjects in order to form a certain image in the minds of other people for further material and social benefits. The strategy of self-presentation is verbalized by the tactics of self-praise, promises, and demonstration of professional success.

The tactics of self-praise are based on the desire of the candidate for the presidency to present himself in the most favorable light, to describe his personal qualities, virtues, talents [8, P. 161]. The tactics of self-praise are verbalized by lexemes, the semantics of which allows us to characterize a politician as a person with a certain set of positive qualities. Such lexemes include, for example, the verbs to fight, to wrestle. Politicians often use adjectives in comparative and superlative degrees, for example: toughest. An indispensable attribute of self-praise tactics is the personal pronoun I:

1. When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports, or the factories moving overseas to Mexico, or to other countries, I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton – only by me [9].

2. As your Senator, I fought against racial profiling and the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine [5].

3. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world. And I have, I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced [9].

The latter example is also a combination with another tactic – the tactic of demonstrating professional success. H. Clinton demonstrates her professional achievements in the field of international and domestic politics and emphasizes her professional managerial and diplomatic abilities (I wrestled, I fought, the toughest).

Thus, the tactics of self-praise are explicated by a certain set of lexical means, in particular verbs, degrees of comparison, etc., expressing the idea of the nominee’s struggle for the presidency.

The tactic of promise is actively used in political discourse by those politicians for whom the main thing is to be elected, to achieve their goals, to gain power, and not compliance with ethical and moral norms. As a result of achieving power, decrees are usually canceled, promises are not fulfilled. If the people are perplexed about this, the politician is surprised and does not recognize his promises, or, at best, apologizes and says that it did not work out.

If I am elected President, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C. [9].

A distinctive feature of Candidate H. Clinton’s promise tactics has a clear value hierarchy of tasks to be solved by the future president. To do this, the politician uses numerals that determine the order of tasks: first, second, third, etc. Lexical representatives of H. Clinton’s tactics of promise are the following verbs: to increase, to make, to give, to build on.

First, we’re going to increase the federal minimum wage. Second, we’re going to make college debt-free for all. And we’re going to build on the president’s idea to make community college free. Third, we’re going to rewrite the rules and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas and profits to go with them [9].

Thus, the tactic of promise is explicated by a set of lexical and grammatical means, the leading of which is the form of the verb of the future tense.

Self-defense strategy. The strategy of self-defense is most often used to deny their involvement in the accusation or retaliatory criticism. The implementation of a self-defense strategy is often reduced to the use of special lexical units. In addition, the speaker evades the answer and changes the topic of the statement, "laughs off" using sarcasm or rhetorical questions. This strategy is implemented through a certain set of tactics used by the author for self-defense.

Clinton: At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes. No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy [10].

Clinton: I did say when I was Secretary of State, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard. It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn’t meet my standards. My standards for more new, good jobs for Americans, for raising wages for Americans. And I want to make sure that I can look into the eyes of any middle-class American and say, ‘this will help raise your wages.’ And I concluded I could not [10].

Tactics of negative evaluation of actions and qualities. The negative assessment of the interlocutor and his actions is aimed at emphasizing the responsibility of the individual for the reprehensible action. Charges are brought on the basis of the communicant’s own ideas about the norm, moral and ethical attitudes, etc. The following example clearly illustrates the use of tactics of negative evaluation of actions and qualities in order to discredit the enemy.

Everywhere I look, I see the possibilities of what our country could be. But we can’t solve any of these problems by relying on the politicians who created them. We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place [10].

The analyzed example shows that the adversative conjunction “but” serves as the core of grammatical means of implementing contrary communication.

The second tactic in solving the strategy of self-defense is the tactic of criticism. In our materials, criticism is expressed mainly through emotional arguments and means of negative evaluation.

Hilary Clinton wants to be President. But she doesn’t have the temperament, or, as Bernie Sanders’ said, the judgement, to be president [10].

The tactics of accusation. The purpose of this tactic is to attribute guilt to someone, to present the interlocutor and his intentions, views, interests in a negative light. The tactics of accusation are implemented with the help of ridicule, insults, condemnations and accusations. Often the accusation is unsubstantiated and unfounded [4, P. 235].

Clinton: Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different – they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies [10].

A discrediting strategy. This strategy occupies the most prominent place in the group of conflict strategies. The perlocative effect, consisting in diminishing the dignity of the addressee, insulting him, ridiculing him, is intensified in the presence of third parties. To implement this strategy, exclusively negative, conflicting speech actions are chosen – insult, sneer, mockery.

Trump: Hillary Clinton is the vessel for all of the global, special interests seeking to run our government and our lives [8].

Trump: Crooked Hillary is nothing more than a Wall Street PUPPET [8].

Conclusion

Thus, the article considered the semantics of strategies and tactics of political discourse based on analysis of H. Clinton and D. Trump’s election speeches. We came to the conclusion that D. Trump and H. Clinton use a number of tactics in their election campaign speeches within the framework of certain strategies. Each speech has its own language features, which are used to influence voters and meet the main function of political discourse. However, we can say that the list of the described tactics should certainly be considered open, since the differences in the methods of tactical construction of conflict discourse are due to situational features.