Discursive Means and Tactics of Forming the Media Image of the President of Russia in the German Political Media Discourse

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the practical necessity of a systematic research of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of communicative tactics and discursive means actualization in forming the media image of V. V. Putin, the president of Russia, in the political media discourse during the period of aggravation of the information-psychological warfare of the collective West in regard to the Russian Federation and, in particular, to the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin, in the context of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. The authors aim to determine the communicative tactics and discursive means of forming the media image of the President of Russia, as well as to identify his media portrait in the current political situation in Germany. The present study offers a theoretical review of modern Russian and foreign studies, devoted to the definition of media image. The material of the present study is the documentary film “Putin – Der gefährliche Despot” (ZDF). The research is based on N. B. Ruzhentseva and O. L. Mikhaleva’s classification of communicative tactics and is carried out with the help of the methods of continuous sampling, discourse analysis, contextual analysis, as well as the method of quantitative calculation. The authors identify 17 main communicative tactics and discursive means of forming the media image of the President of Russia used in 80 contexts. The obtained findings allow to demonstrate the linguistic manifestation of the critical, distrustful and wary position of Germany towards Russia and V. Putin; the presence, to a greater extent, of predominantly negative judgments about the personality of the President of Russia and his activities in the political arena; Germany’s desire to discredit Russia and its President at the federal level in the eyes of its population through the use of a diverse array of communicative tactics and discursive means of speech influence.

Keywords

• political media discourse
• media image of a politician
• tactics
• discursive means
• manipulation
• discrediting
• information-psychological effects