Congratulation on professional holidays in the East Slavic presidential discourse: a cognitive-discourse analysis

Abstract

The article examines the conceptual and compositional transformation of the genre of congratulations on professional holidays in the East Slavic presidential discourses of V.V. Putin, A.G. Lukashenko and V.A. Zelensky. The authors analyze the specificty of modeling a picture of the world in the interaction of holiday and presidential discourses within the traditionally interpersonal communication genre. In the presidential discourse, congratulations are a tool to maintain and strengthen power, a way to form necessary values and attitudes and a form of communication with professional communities, which can contribute to the development of professional identity and strengthen the prestige of the profession. Congratulations on professional holidays allow to model the image of a specialist, which, on the one hand, is determined by the socio-cultural characteristics of this society, and on the other hand, by the political attitudes of the speaker, who is the country leader with undeniable authority. As in other congratulations in the presidential discourse, the texts under consideration preserve the traditional structure of the genre and add an informational part, where the speaker models the image of a professional, choosing characteristics in accordance with their own political goals and objectives, and gives an orientation to the future. At the same time, the content of the congratulation is determined by the holiday (honoring the professional community), the speaker’s attitudes, and the current political and economic situation in the country.