Discursive structures in political communication

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of discursive structures in political sphere, represented in the English-language source Twitter of the President of the United States. The purpose of the study is to analyze the discursive structures that arise as a result of the interaction of political discourse with other types of discourses. To achieve it, the authors set the following tasks: identifying specific markers in the political discourse that characterize the presence of other discourses, analyzing the features of the communicative situation of message transmission, identifying the features of interdiscursiveness and polydiscursivity. The material for the analysis was the statements of Donald Trump on Twitter from November 1, 2019 to November 1, 2020. The authors of the article use various methods: descriptive, contextual analysis, comparative, methods of observation, content analysis and discourse analysis. The study uses the linguistic concept of the American scientist D. Himes S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G, which includes an analysis of the components of the situation: Participants, Ends, Act Sequence etc. Using the situation model in the messages, participants, their actions and other characteristics were highlighted. President is the author of the messages, while the addressee is a collective one. The same participants, depending on the context of the message, become participants of other types of discourses. The article examines such types of discourses as economic, educational, medical, which are part of political discourse. Their choice is due to the socio-economic significance of the issues of economics, education and health care in the life of society. In addition, the media function of political communication is reflected. The texts are posted on the Internet platform, due to which the political discourse is drawn into the space of the Internet discourse. The analysis made it possible to identify the features of large-scale interdiscursiveness and to highlight the levels of discursive heterogeneity.

Keywords

• political discourse
• situation model
• discursive structures
• interdiscursiveness
• polydiscursiveness
• discursive heterogeneity.