Self-Presentation Strategy and Speech Tactics in Political Discourse (based on the Public Speeches of Latin American Politicians at the UN)

The article is dedicated to the study of self-presentation strategy and speech tactics considered as a communicative strategy aimed at creating a certain image of a politician and changing the conceptual views of the recipients in order to manipulate their consciousness. Implementation of such strategies and tactics can become an effective method to achieve established goals, both state-related and personal. The research material includes public speeches of the Latin American politicians at the 73rd and 77th UN General Assembly. The speeches we analyze are part of the modern Latin American discourse which is defined as ideologically heterogenic with predominant social justice and inequality-oriented approach, expressiveness, and anti-imperialism ideas. The relevance of the present study is determined by the need to clarify the theoretical and pragmatic foundations of the political discourse analysis. For this purpose, self-presentation strategies and speech tactics are studied in comparison. The results show that in the status-conditioned discourse two dominant ideas underlie the self-presentation strategy– “our people”, having a positive axiological status and aimed at changing the views of Latin America’s society as traditionally marginalized, and “we are a victim”, having a negative axiological status, which the politicians use to justify political and economic failures. The speech tactics includes “strong personality”, “appeal to authority”, “appeal to historical documents”, “appeal to constitutive documents”. We have found that the two dominant ideas are made up of some subdominant ideas. These have the same axiological characteristics in the speeches of Latin American politicians which fully corresponds to the historical context of these countries. Thus, the future studies can be centered on studying speech strategies and tactics of personality-conditioned discourse in the respective countries’ media.

1. Alexeyev A. B. The Influence of Political Discourse on the Formation of the Language Personality of a Politician. Vestnik NSU. Series: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, 2021, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 151–166. (in Russ.)

2. Alexeyev A. B. The Political Marginalization as a Communicative Strategy of Power Domination in Political Discourse. Vestnik NSU. Series: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, 2022, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 96–111. (in Russ.)

3. Bondar, O. Y. The Latin American Discourse of Self-Identification: An Ontological Stage. Vestnik RUDN. Series: Philosophy, 2015, no 1, pp. 58–69. (in Russ.)

4. Bondar O. Y. Architectonics of Latin American Identification Discourse in the Twentieth Century. (part 1). Vestnik of the RUDN. Series: Philology, 2016, no. 2. pp. 21–29. (in Russ.)

5. Voloshina S. V. The Communicative Strategy of Self-Presentation in Autobiographical Discourse. Vestnik of Irkutsk State Technical University, 2014, no. 9 (92), pp. 261–265. (in Russ.)

6. Dayneko P. M. Discursive Strategies of Self-Presentation in Institutional Internet Communication. Cand. Diss. of Philology. Saint Petersburg, 2011, 195 p. (in Russ.)

7. Demeshkina T. A. The Communicative Strategy of Self-Presentation in Women’s Dialect Discourse (based on autobiographical stories). Text. Book. Book Publishing, 2020, no. 24, pp. 47–67. (in Russ.)

8. Dubrovskaya T. V. Strategies of the Positive-Evaluative Representation of Russian-Italian Relations in Russian Foreign Policy Discourse (based on the material of the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation). Scientific Dialogue, 2017, no. 10, pp. 26–40. (in Russ.)

9. Larionova M. V., Slivchikova Yu. V. Modern Spain: A New Political Reality – A New Political Discourse. Vestnik of the Tomsk State University. Series: Philology, 2019, no 59, pp. 53–66. (in Russ.)

10. Mishlanov V. A. Communicative Strategies and Tactics in Modern Political Discourse (based on the material of political advertising of election campaigns in 2003, 2007, 2008). Vestnik of Perm University. Russian and Foreign Philology, 2009, no 6, pp. 5–13. (in Russ.)

11. Moiseenko L. V. The Phenomenology of Oratorical Discourses of Latin American Leaders. Vestnik of the RUDN. Series: Questions of education: Languages and specialty, 2015, no. 2, pp. 36–40. (in Russ.)

12. Moiseenko L. V. The Populist Political Discourse: Diagnostic Signs and Linguocognitive Techniques of Creation. Vestnik of Volgograd State University. Series 2: Linguistics, 2019, no. 2, pp. 105– 117. (in Russ.)

13. Nikiforova E. S. Communicative Strategies and Tactics of Judicial Discourse. Vestnik of Chelyabinsk State University, 2012, no. 17, pp. 100–103. (in Russ.)

14. Parshina O. N. Strategies and Tactics of Speech Behavior of the Modern Political Elite of Russia. Doct. Diss. of Philology. Saratov, 2005. 325 p. (in Russ.)

15. Smirnova I. V. The Use of Linguistic Means of Speech Manipulation for the Implementation of a Persistent Strategy in the Texts of Programs of Spanish Political Parties. Vestnik of the RUDN. Series: Questions of education: Languages and Specialty, 2014, no. 2, pp. 78–84. (in Russ.)

16. Sukhanova A. S. Strategies and Sactics of Political Discourse (based on the material of P. Iglesias’ speeches). Philological Sciences. Questions of Theory and Practice, 2017, no. 6, pp. 160–163. (in Russ.)

17. Sukhanov Yu. Yu. The Political Discourse as an Object of Linguistic Analysis // Vestnik of the RUDN. Series: Theory of Language. Semiotics. Semantics, 2018, no. 9 (1), pp. 200–212. (in Russ.)

18. Ulanov A. V. Communicative Strategies in Military Discourse. Siberian Philological Journal, 2014, no. 4 (28), pp. 246–254. (in Russ.)

19. Ustinova O. V. Features of the Representation of the Image of Canada in Political Discourse. Vestnik of the RUDN. Series: Theory of Language. Semiotics. Semantics, 2018, no. 1, pp. 136–157. (in Russ.)

20. Filatkina G. S. Communicative Strategies in the Political Media Discourse of the Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil (1999-2014). Cand. Diss. of Philology. Moscow, 2015, 265 p. (in Russ.)

21. Shiryaev N. S. Communicative Strategies of Representation of National Identity in Political Media Discourse (based on the material of English and French). Cand. Diss. of Philology. Saratov, 2017, 195 p. (in Russ.)