Accusation as a Strategy to Discredit the Biden Administration in the American Media

Abstract

The phenomenon of verbal aggression in political media journalism attracts the attention of researchers studying various confrontational speech strategies and tactics, including the strategy of discrediting, implemented primarily by the tactics of accusation. The article presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of accusation tactics implementing the speech and behavioral strategy of discrediting the Biden administration on the Tucker Carlson Tonight talk show. Speech strategies, techniques and linguistic means of implementing accusation tactics are revealed. The purpose of the article is to analyze the tactics of accusation that implement the speech and behavioral strategy of discrediting the Biden administration in the Tucker Carlson Tonight show. The source of the research material was the scripts of 31 Tucker Carlson Tonight shows. The empirical basis of the study was 205 contexts discrediting the Biden administration through accusation tactics. The methods of logic and statistics, the system and functional method, description and interpretation were used to analyze the material. The tactics of accusation are more often implemented through a group of explicit speech acts than implicit ones, while each group includes reasoned and undocumented accusations. Common and distinctive speech techniques, morphological, syntactic, lexical and expressive language tools were identified for these groups of speech acts. Statistical data on the analysis of accusation tactics implemented by groups of implicit and explicit speech acts can be presented in the form of a ratio of 1:1.5. Typical means of expression for explicit speech acts are phraseological units and slogans (reasoned and undocumented accusation), for implicit speech acts: hyperbole (reasoned accusation) and the technique of “inappropriate direct speech” (undocumented accusation). The means of expressive syntax are a distinctive feature of implicit and explicit undocumented accusation.

Keywords

• political talk show
• speech and behavioral discrediting strategy
• accusation tactics
• speech act
• speech technique
• language tools