Shkvorchenko N. Typological indexation of political toxicity in the media discourse of the USA, Great Britain and Ukraine

The thesis presents a new scientific direction – the semiosis of political toxicity in a comparative-contrastive perspective, which involves the synthesis of verbal, paraverbal, and extralingual signs of the political toxicity phenomenon from the standpoints of media discourse, political linguistic personology, cognitive linguistic comparativism, and comparative typological indexing of linguistic-cognitive phenomena degrees manifestation. The dissertation is methodologically based on the synergistic principle of relevant empirical and experimental methods and techniques of comparative and typological research, which were adapted to diagnose the degree of political toxicity manifestation in the media discourse of the USA, Great Britain and Ukraine. The research clarifies the definition of political toxicity as a result of the person’s behaviour perception that causes reputational harm or discriminates a politician. It constructs a scientific model of semantic and value-conceptual features in the structure of TOXICITY concepts in the lexicographic sources of the English and Ukrainian languages and the expansion of their semantic structure in European linguistic cultures, as well as the experimental identification of the associative and figurative zone of political toxicity in the minds of Americans, Britons and Ukrainians. The paper explains the relevance for a comparative and typological research of political toxicity in the media discourse of the USA, Great Britain and Ukraine by the general socio-political situation in the world, where these countries are the key subjects of the new geopolitics, and stimulates scientists to develop new communication strategies to ensure the effective interaction of all participants in the political process, and contributes to the mitigation and neutralization of toxic effects.