Russian journal of linguistics: Vestnik RUDN (Dec 2017)

CORPOREAL PRAGMATICS OF THE SUBJECT OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE

  • Z Z Chanysheva

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-9182-2017-21-4-822-832
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 21, no. 4
pp. 822 – 832

Abstract

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The article aims at tracing means of corporeal semantics employed to create a nonverbal discourse-portrait of the subject of political discourse. Complexity of semantic corporeal pragmatics interpretation of participants in political communication by members of other linguacultures is determined by national and cultural specificity of nonverbal behavioral signs as well as by individual preferences. The article shows dependence of body language signals on the character and conditions of social interaction in institutional sphere, psycho-emotional type and state of a politician, the aim to produce a certain effect on the interlocutor and the audience. The material includes theoretical resources, body language dictionaries, descriptions of Barack Obama’s corporeal discourse-portrait by American nonverbal experts with detailed interpretation of significance of such cues. The examples selected from descriptions are subjected to componential, contextual, pragmatic, comparative and linguacultural methods of analysis. The research testifies to the prospects of efficient use of various representations of corporeal semantics and pragmatics related to participants in political communication. The data obtained confirm the importance of body language in creating individual nonverbal behavior models of the subject of political discourse reflecting ethnic, national and socio-cultural peculiarities and personal features.

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