COGNITIVE-RHETORICAL FEATURES OF LANGUAGE EXPRESSION OF AUSTRALIAN AND UKRAINIAN POLITICIANS’ ABUSIVE COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR

Abstract

The study is focused on the cognitive and rhetorical processes underlying the discourse manifestations of politically incorrect language behavior of Australian and Ukrainian politicians. The aim of the paper is to identify specific linguistic and institutional correlations between the main external reasons, internal motives and the actual consequences of their abusive communication. The proposed approach to the analysis uses the achievements of rhetoric and cognitive linguistics to identify patterns of emotional conceptualization reflected in communicative strategies of insult in political communication. Insults as non-institution rhetorical practices serve two functions of a narrower and a broader scale. The former concerns strengthening one's own face or destroying certain beliefs and values of a political opponent: and the later aims imposing or rejecting certain social norms and principles of political life governing, Australian and Ukrainian in particular. The material studied shows that the specific irony in political insults is used with the basic function of expressing power over the opponent, which allows politicians to create certain social relations of authoritarianism that assume the asymmetry of communicative positions of opponents. The communicative strategy of insult in political communication is an effective means of influence, which is deliberately used to form and impose a subjective vision of the situation and initiate the conflict. Particular emphasis is placed on the ethos- and pathos-oriented arguments of communication, manifested by the emotional means of expressing verbal aggression within the strategy of discreditation in the studied political discourses. The use of insults in the Australian political lingua system demonstrates stronger political polarization, manifesting competitive relations between opposing political parties, while Ukrainian politicians demonstrate a greater propensity to use ethosand pathos-oriented arguments directed at individual political opponents.