Strategies of Power in Political Discourse: Analysis of the Communicative Situation Between Equal Communicators

Abstract

The notion of ‘power’ is one of the most important for humanities. The article’s objective is to discover strategies of power in particular in the situation of communication between equal interlocutors. The goals of the study include: explication of terms ‘power’, ‘strategy of power’, ‘impoliteness’, ‘manipulation’, ‘language game’, critical discourse analysis taking into account social characteristics of speakers, which are not unchangeable social phenomena but are always constructed / reconstructed in discourse, finding those fragments of discourse that in this or that way demonstrate power relations and interpretation of them in accordance with linguopolitical theories, conclusions and assessing further prospects and vectors of study of power within an interdisciplinary framework. The methodology of the study is primarily based on the critical discourse analysis and kratological analysis presupposing that any communication - not just the political one - can unfold in the situation of symmetric / asymmetric power relations between communicators. The material of the research encompasses the texts of debates and rally speeches created in the American political discourse of the years of 2015-2016 and broadcast on the video platform of YouTube: 13 texts are considered, with the overall watching time exceeding 10 hours. During the research it has been found out that politicians using different types of impoliteness, for example the attack on the opponent’s face, can refuse to recognize his high social status, question his achievements and merits, come up with categorical demands. The speaker trying to present himself before the audience as a powerful man can break maxims of ethical speech behavior, not considering the interlocutor’s opinion. Following the foreign scholars, it is suggested to interpret such cases of the use of language power games in accordance with the term ‘strategy of power’.

Keywords

• power
• manipulation
• impoliteness