THE STRATEGIES OF ARGUMENTATION IN POLITICAL SPEECHES

Abstract

Background. Political discourse is the most value-oriented of other types of discourse. The most compelling political arguments during the presidential campaigns include four key criteria: democracy, moral persuasion, social questions and ideological problems. The current political discourse presents characterizations of events from the standpoint of individual values, party values, and personal interests. In this case, the concept of political/ideological characterizations is associated with a system of values, which determine the position of the subject of speech. Nowadays, argumentation is studied by a special method – the theory of argumentation, but at the same time it becomes an interest for linguistic research, because argumentation exists only in one of the forms of speeches. The purpose. Is to characterize the specific linguo-stylistic features of political speeches, identify the argumentation tools in the politicians’ speeches and analyze the ways and peculiarities of their translation, which help translators to preserve the completeness of the content and transmit the argumentation tools into the translation of political texts from English into Ukrainian. Methods. The following linguistic research methods were used in our study: descriptive method to describe the characteristics of argumentation tools and their equivalents, which were studied and comparative method to make comparisons between argumentation tools in source and target languages. Results. The functional specificity of political discourse in relation to other types of discourse is manifested in its basic instrumental function (the struggle for power). At the same time, political discourse, along with religious and advertising, is included in the group of discourses for which the regulatory function is leading, since it emphasizes the role of language in regulating the behavior of the. The main function of political discourse is to use it as an instrument of political power. Political communication performs the function of an intermediary link, often replacing physical violence itself and makes possible changes in society towards ordering, paves the way for compromises, making facts and arguments well-known for public. Various lexico-stylistic devices, figures and tropes emphasize the language of a political leader and have a direct impact on the image of politicians. It turned out that the main ones are: extensive usage of colloquial and slang vocabulary and composite words. We discovered the following stylistic figures: antithesis, inversion, ellipsis, parceling, repetitions and rhetorical questions. The most frequently used among them were repetitions, rhetorical questions and parceling. Discussion. The dominant aspect of the political discourse is the concept of value, which must be reproduced in the translated political text, taking into account the value hierarchy of different cultures. Translation includes several stages: first translator should understand and clearly explore what he/she translates, analyze (if the original text causes difficulties), and after that choose appropriate means of expression in the target language.The investigation of different lexico-stylistic devices, types of preservation of argumentation in the translation of political speeches of American politicians is not exhaustive and requires further study by structural, grammatical and morphological analysis.