Дискурс Пи (Mar 2021)
“Transmitting today a symbol of state power...” – discursive features of the outgoing president’s speech
Abstract
The objective of this article is to examine the thematic and compositional features of the outgoing President's speech. It is important to study this text, because it helps scholars to investigate the discursive forms of the transition of state power, the linguistic mechanisms of the intertextuality of political texts, and the new genre of Russian political discourse. Drawing on discursive analytical approach, linguistic pragmatics and content analysis we identify both verbal components (a combination of linguistic signs, their distribution in a speech line) and pragmatic factors (situations of generation and perception of a text, author's communicative and pragmatic attitudes). The research material is the Boris Yeltsin's speech at the inauguration of Vladimir Putin in 2000. We have chosen this speech, because, firstly, it plays the important role in political communication, i. e., being the last political statement of the President, it presents citizens the results of his management and the vision of the country's development; secondly, there is a lack of knowledge on this new genre in political linguistics. Our findings reveal that the main topics of Boris Yeltsin's speech are: the significance of the current political event in the post-Soviet history, achievements of the presidential administration, the role of the President in the country's history, and the address to the new President. It was found that a speech composition consists of the several elements: beginning (1 paragraph) - introduction (2 paragraph) - main part (3-5 paragraph) - addressing (6 paragraph) - finale (7 paragraph). The politician uses a circular text structure. The results also show that the main structural principle of the speech is opposition, which organizes semantic contrast and forms the effect of polarization of ideas, including political ones. The speech of the first President of Russia can be described as a guidance message to a new generation of politicians and, in particular, to Vladimir Putin as the new leader of the country. Using the communicative tactic of "positive self-presentation", Boris Yeltsin constructs his political image as the founder of a new state. Boris Yeltsin proclaims freedom and democracy as the main political values. Moreover, freedom is located in the semantic field "struggle".
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