Language manifestation of the discrediting communicative strategy as a way of political image formation in the virtual space (as exemplified in pre-election tweets by D. Trump)

Communicative strategies politicians choose during election campaigns are becoming a successful image tool to impact electorate in modern virtual communication. In the research, image in virtual communication is understood as a representation of a politician which s/he constructs by means of two strategies: self-presentation and discredit. The aim of the article is to analyze the language means of the discredit communicative strategy as a means of political image formation during the election campaign. The discredit strategy allows to create a positive image of a politician against the background of the opponent's negative image. The communicative strategy of discredit promotes implementation of negative notions about the election opponent in the electorate consciousness. The present article considers the tactics of the discredit strategy in detail. These tactics are: the tactics of incrimination, the tactics of invective, the tactics of intimidation and the tactics of imperative. Their purposes are also determined (accusation of the opponent of the breach of law; belittling his/her competitive qualities, intimidation of the voter, ordering the voter and the opponent to do necessary actions). A successful instrument to form a desirable political image is short messages on the social network Twitter. The examples of D. Trump's statements (tweets) taken from Twitter, which is considered to be an effective tool in the image struggle, have served as data for the study. The total number of the studied material is 300 tweets selected during the 2016 campaign. Research methods of semantic-stylistic analysis and context analysis, which contributed to the identification of the actual meaning of the tweets and their stylistic functions, were applied. The method of quantitative calculation was used to establish the reliability of the obtained results. The use of modern social networks during the election campaign allows to reduce the time frame of the politician's negative image formation and to have an active influence on voters. The research showed that D. Trump tends to use the tactics of invective (47.67%) and the tactics of incrimination (35.66%) more often. D. Trump frequent uses these tactics because they are effective in making voters doubt the rightness of the rival in the campaign. In conclusion, the authors state that tactics of the discredit communicative strategy represented by the markers of offenses, insults, intimidation and conscription allowed the politician to successfully solve the problem of the opponent's negative image formation. The basis of the strategy of discredit is words with negative connotations, as well as metaphorical statements, intensification, simile and imperative constructions. The strategy of discredit on Twitter is a high-quality optimization of linguistic manipulation of voters.

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