Key Words as Markers of the Communicative Behavior of the Discursive Personality of the Nominee to the USA Presidency (Based on the Genre of Pre-Election Debates)

Abstract

Introduction. This paper presents an analysis of the language indicators of communicative behavior of US presidential candidates during election debates. The scientific novelty consists of determining the specifics of the characteristics of the communicative behavior of the discursive personality, which form the basis of the corresponding social type, which can be identified using the methods of linguistic analysis. The study of the discursive personality is reduced to a description of the types of its performative actions; identification of types of communicative tonality that characterize the manner of behavior of a discursive personality and make it recognizable; identification of axiological characteristics of the studied discursive personality. The relevance of the work lies in the study of the problematic aspects of the discursive personality, explaining the specifics of the models of communicative behavior in situations of political communication.Methodology and sources. This study used the methods of corpus linguistics and the interpretative method of discourse analysis. The texts of the genre of election debates, which took place from 2000 to 2020, became the empirical basis of this study. The volume of the corpus of these texts amounted to more than 1.5 million words. A corpus method of keywords, which allows to identify unique tokens of pre-election speeches of each of the presidential candidates; a qualitative analysis method that explains typical communicative actions that representatives of the two ruling parties of the United States, were used to establish the characteristics of the communicative behavior of US presidential candidates.Results and discussion. The results of a comparative study of the discursive personality of the US presidential candidate representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties are presented. The study of keywords showed typical tactics of communicative behavior of candidates for US presidential candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. It is established that presidential candidates from both parties use prosecution tactics in election debates, Republicans are more likely to resort to direct accusation tactics accusations of violating pragmatic, instrumental values, Democrats prefer indirect accusation tactics, which are based on accusations of violation of moral norms and values by political opponents.Conclusion. The discursive personality of the US presidential candidate reflects the variable socio-ideological component of political discourse, which is manifested in a specific set of speech strategies and tactics and language structures that implement them.