Speech portrayal of a PR officer as a means of artistic expression (based on the material of Christopher Buckley's novels)

Abstract

A lot of research is devoted to both the language of advertising and politics and a character`s image in the works of fiction, respectively. However, some issues related to the specificity of PR officers' work regarding public relations as a separate form of business different from advertising or marketing practices might require some clarification. In the present article the author concentrates, in particular, on the determination of types of stylistic means and other means of artistic expression in the speech of a particular character, as well as on the formation of speech portrayal of a specialist in the field of public relations. In addition, the article concerns itself with considering the functions of such specific linguistic and phraseological units, and stylistic, syntactic and graphic means that may be typical of the speech of the same character in several novels by Christopher Buckley. Using the material of such novels as ‘No Way to Treat a First Lady’ and ‘Thank You for Smoking’, the author seeks to analyse Nick Naylor’s speech in order to see how consistently his speech portrayal is constructed in the two novels and to what extent his profession defines him as a person. As far as the theoretical background of the article is concerned, the author relies on and does research into the following issue: is it possible to challenge the research results stating the correspondence of a character’s speech characteristics to his work environment and employment sphere? In addition, the author gives credit to the research of the Russian linguists for investigating philological aspects of advertising texts production and word play.

Keywords

• pr
• recurring character
• speech portrayal
• stylistic means
• identity
• career
• professional.