Politician as a subject of political discourse and linguistic personality (on the example of Salome Zurabishvili's discourse)

Abstract

According to one of the explanations, discourse might be described as a scientific object, which defines the parameters of individual cognitive system of the specific linguistic personality.

Each political discourse is based on the whole complex of ideological viewpoints. On the one hand, politics means the nomenclature of balancing government and economical resources into the state, and actions towards relations among countries. But, one the other hand, political discourse is personal, personified and presents actualizing way of the first level in individual cognition. According to this viewpoint, it’s particularly important to discuss the conception of linguistic personality in politics.

The concept of linguistic personality means generalized communicational person having linguistic-cultural, communicational and creative values, knowledge and behavior. Three levels of development of the linguistic personality can be revealed: verbal-semantic, cognitive and pragmatic. Showing individualism on verbal-semantic level is nominal. Individualism is more sharply revealed on pragmatic level, as a person’s intention, interest and situational motivation are apparent. As a result of discussing textual and video materials of a politician, linguistic personality as a political discourse subject can be defined. Actions of linguistic personality, in politics, is directed to the fight for ruling, which is the basic goal of political communication. A politician, as a linguistic personality, realizes himself/herself in discursive actions: he/she purposefully uses linguistic and paralinguistic methods, which helps him/her win the elections. Linguistic personality of a politician is discursive-textual phenomenon, in which individual characteristics are represented in diverse intensification. Linguistic researchers of political discourse describe basic strategies of linguistic personality, such as: manipulation, argumentation, self-presentation, discrediting opponents, fight for ruling etc. each strategy is carried out by specific tactics. Tactics is defined with the speaker’s intention and is explicated by the whole complex of the methods and ways, which, itself, determine the use of specific lexical units.

The purpose of the article is to describe the politician as a linguistic personality of the subject of political discourse. In this study, the pre-election speeches of Salome Zurabishvili, will be presented. The communicative-pragmatic analysis of her language discourse will be discussed, which includes the features of a specific politician's "speech passport".