LANGUAGE MEANS USED IN USA AND IRAN MEDIA WAR

Abstract

Political discourse remains one of the most researched types of discourse in linguistics nowadays. A huge number of works devoted to the selection and analysis of language means in public statements of politicians from different countries confirm the relevance of this issue. Their aim is to demonstrate how verbal techniques can influence the audience, create a favorable atmosphere for the speaker, and support certain political decisions. It is typical for politicians to use various language means to create images. In the submitted work public speeches of the American president Donald Trump were studied for the pres-ence of language means expressing the media war between America and Iran. The choice of the subject matter is due to the complication of diplomatic relations between two governments including provocative and extravagant statements against Iran’s policy. The main attention is paid to the lexical component in the speech analysis of the American president. The obtained results indicate three major groups by which their content can be differentiated: the demonization of Iran, the image of suffering Iranian people, and the image of strong America which is friendly to the population of Iran but counteracts its regime. Among the language means exploited by Donald Trump there can be distinguished a lot of positive or negative lexis, the expressiveness of which is emphasized by contrast. The achieved outcomes can be used for a more profound study and detecting some characteristic features of Donald Trump’s rhetoric with regard to other “unfriendly”-to-America countries.