The relevance of the presented study is determined, firstly, by need in
investigation of the multi-vector nature of political discourse, the specifics of its
impact on people (persuasion, argumentation, manipulation); secondly, by lack of the
comprehensive studies of the Ukrainian institutional political discourse in cognitive
and pragmatic dimensions; thirdly, by lack of scientific works in the modern
Ukrainian linguistics, in which the archetypal opposition “self ↔ alien” is
illuminated from the perspective of the value orientations of different politicians;
fourthly, by the lacuna in the study of the types of communicative behaviour
characteristic for the politicians.
Scientific novelty of the present thesis lies in the fact that a comprehensive
study of cognitive and pragmatic dimensions of the Ukrainian institutional political
discourse was for the first time done on the material of political texts and videos of
such politicians as P. Poroshenko, Yu. Tymoshenko, V. Yanukovich and
V. Yushchenko (genres of their official speeches, statements, letters, examples of
their spontaneous speech); contextual verbalizers of the binary archetypal opposition
“self ↔ alien” have been identified and processed in the diachronic aspect of the
Ukrainian political process; several new approaches to the modeling of the structure
of persuasion influence were proposed; metastrategies and tactics used by politicians
were presented; types of communicative behaviour of Ukrainian politicians were
revealed; the content and the axiological characteristics of hyperconcept
BELONGING TO EUROPE in the modern Ukrainian political linguoculture were
identified.
The study states that the institutional political discourse is one of the most
powerful means of influence and persuasion in the modern political world, which
determines to the great extent the mode of perception of political realities by the
ordinary man. On the one hand, it reflects the general political life of the country, on
the other hand, it manifests the struggle for power of certain political figures and
groups of influence. That is why the institutional political discourse appears to be an
expression of ideological orientations and interests of certain political forces.
Therefore, the first and the foremost task of any politician is to attract to his
side as many voters as it is possible, to get the masses be interested in his ideas, to
influence the consciousness of the target audience.
Institutional political discourse is characterized by a persuasive speech effect,
which manifests itself within the text. It is realized by various means of
argumentation and manipulation (including actualization of the binary opposition
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“self ↔ alien”); use of manipulative metastrategies and tactics; manifestation of various types of communicative behaviour of political figures, etc.
The analysis of the axiological dimension of dichotomy “self ↔ alien” on the material of political texts and videos allowed to state the identity of the basic values of Ukrainian politicians (P. Poroshenko, Yu. Tymoshenko, V. Yanukovych and V. Yushchenko) since their ideological priorities are determined by the principles of democracy and morality. At the same time, the nature of values and anti-values correlation determines the image and the status of each of the politicians.
