Політичний дискурс риторики: історико-культурологічні виміри
Political Discourse of Rhetoric: Historical and Cultural Dimensions

Summary/Abstract: This article analyzes the strategies and techniques of political discourse rhetoric, its historical and cultural context. The issue of political discourse at the rhetoric horizons of contemporary social, cultural and political development, public communication ranks the top. Under these conditions, the growth of scientific interest in the unexplored rhetoric of political discourse is a timely, urgent scientific challenge. This public interest has found its coverage in scientific studies, monographs, theses, articles, books and textbooks on rhetoric, philology, political semantics, journalism, speechwriting, advertising and public relations. In the present day science there is a number of discourse definitions : as a "special use of language to express special mentality" (Y. S. Stepanov) as the ratio of the mental world (M. N. Kozhina), communicative sphere (V. E. Chernyavska) concept (V. Z. Dem’yankov), socially and historically determined social practice (U. Maas), social roles of participants in the process of communication (A. Mack Hole), social space (O. I. Sheigal). Semiotic discourse defines those characteristics of speech that help to shape texts. British researchers R. Hodge and G. Kress examine text and discourse as those complementing each other, thus emphasizing either social or linguistic level. A Dutch researcher T. van Dijk considers a communicative discourse as a complex phenomenon that comprises a social context, information about the participants of communication, the knowledge of the production and perception in. Not only discourse is a linguistic structure, and above all, it is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. The feature of a political discourse is that it is functionally focused on the future oriented context. The Russian scientist O. M. Parshina understands by the political discourse of "linguistic activities of political actors in the field of institutional communication" and notes that the communication features of political discourse is "institutsionality, conventsionality and publicity (formality)". Modern rhetorical practice, the development of the political discourse rhetoric in Ukraine and ex-USSR countries has revived the scientific interest in strategies and techniques of a speech influence of a speaker, a politician, a public figure. In recent years, there has been carried a number of researches in terms of the language influence functions in political communication being implemented using different language strategies. Thus, O. I. Sheigal identifies several strategies: obscuring, obscuring unwanted information (allows to make unpleasant facts less obvious) hoaxes (hiding the truth and knowingly enter into the ignorance , anonymity (depersonalization) as taking responsibility removal. There also exist a few reflexive strategies (the construction of an enemy image), the strategy de-legitimisation (the destruction of the opponent’s image) amalgation strategy ("we"-Discourse). As part of the political discourse as an argument there may be appeal to the arguments at three different levels: logos, pathos, ethos. The rhetoric of political discourse is characterized by the use of three groups of lexical political vocabulary: political constants (evaluative-neutral basic political terminology), evaluatively-labeled basic political terms (connotative meaning is changing) and topical vocabulary of modern day. The last group of words can be related to policy initiatives, the names of existing politicians and organizations. The art of the managing audience during a public speech is based on the central role of personal influence, that is, the need to develop assessment ,related to individual listeners speaker: the use of verbal and non-verbal means of increasing social prestige, setting the psychological contact with the audience, chat application forms through the forms and methods broadcasting compulsory and intensive, use of gestures, attention to facial expressions and posture, use of slogans, advertising techniques, methods of attracting attention, formulating attractive titles speech. Thus, the political rhetoric affects interpersonal motivational mechanism of changes regulation in cultural relations in society. Cultural, social and historical changes have formed various social needs that underlie the social order of the spiritual realm of society, of which the rhetoric is an inseparable part. The rhetoric of antiquity laid the foundations to modern rhetoric as a social and cultural tradition. It has accumulated the basic techniques and strategies of ancient rhetoric with knowledge of the laws of social psychology to realize the impact on the audience. Presently skills and effective communication skills are in demand due to the fact that most professional fields need specialists who are able to control the flow of information in today’s society to shape public opinion and take advantage of communication for cultural, educational and social services.

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