Information on the thesis

The dissertation studies the peculiarities of the speech aggression manifestations in the political discourse of electronic editions of the United States and Great Britain from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and communication theory.

In the course of research the content of such notions as “speech aggression”, “political electronic discourse”, “invective frame” has been clarified.

The method of frame modelling (frame-subframe-slot) is employed to reconstruct the cognitive structure unraveling around the basic dichotomy (Us :: Them) of the political discourse, which can be viewed as the structure of the highest level of cognitive semantics – a megaframe, frame-evoking lexical units of which are designated within the frames EXTERNAL ENEMY and INTERNAL ENEMY, structured around the ideological constructs of mass consciousness.

The semantics of lexical units linked to the aforementioned frames in the political discourse of the United States and Great Britain is specified within subframes “Totalitarianism”, “Terrorism” “Internal differences”, “Racial / Ethnic identity”. Each of these subframes includes a number of slots rendering the information units. The cognitive construct manifests itself discursively through lexical means (simple words, derivatives, composites and phrases), conceptual (cognitive) metaphor and cognitive metonymy, comparative phraseological units (sustainable similes), precedent names, intertextual inclusions etc. The meaning constructed by these means is realized in the discourse through speech acts.

Subjects of speech aggression vary by social role; social status; explicitness of statements; individual social characteristics; function (a bearer of the professional competence, public opinion, certain information, personal viewpoint, an aggressor, witness or participant in certain events, victim of aggression) and differ in number.

The expansion of speech aggression in the texts of electronic editions is manifested through the use of means of all levels of language system. The most frequent among them are evaluative lexemes, units of disturbing vocabulary and cognitive metaphor. As the most frequently occurring syntactic means rhetorical questions, antithesis, parallel constructions, components of dialog structure, imperative speech genres prevail.

The study has demonstrated that the invective frame distribution as well as the realization of speech aggression strategies and tactics take place on all structural levels of texts of political discourse, including “pretext” complex that provides an extra space for invective intent realization.

Based on the premise that the aggressiveness of invective is an example of gradable value, a number of criteria for measuring the aggressiveness of an expression are accounted for (the presence of additional communicative streams, the form of speech aggression, intensity, the nature of negative evaluation in the semantic structure of lexical units, their expressiveness (emotionality, imagery), stylistic colouring) and 16 levels of speech aggression are distinguished.

The method of comparative analysis provided the means to identify the peculiarities of speech aggression manifestations in British and American political discourses: the former being far more conservative, in keeping with the principle of speech tolerance and at a distance from objects of invective; the latter stands out as more expressive and invective-oriented. Furthermore, in the British political discourse no indication is found of such slots as “Skin colour”, “Peculiarities of national apparel or appearance” within the subframe “Racial / Ethnic identity” peculiar to American electronic editions.

Key words: political discourse, speech aggression, speech strategy, speech tactics, invective, invective frame, destructive communication.