Parametrization of the Discourse of Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit

The author considers Greta Thunberg’s speech discourse at the U.N. Climate Action Summit through the prism of the “Smart Tuning” discourse technology that helps to clarify its linguocognitive mechanisms and parameters of effective communication. The aim of the study is to identify the features of attractive media discourse, achieving effectiveness. The theoretical basis is the works of communication theory, linguoaxiology, synergetics, and discourse technologization. The speech of the environmental activist 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who spoke at the UN Climate Summit in New York on September 23, 2019, was chosen as a case study. Her speech attracted attention with her emotionality and open aggressiveness to the world leaders, whom she accused of doing little to struggle against air pollution. The research methods are cognitive-communicative modeling, linguo-axiological analysis, cognitive interpretation method, content analysis. The author develops the discursive technology “Smart Tuning”, which is based on powers, parameters and mechanisms, and whose synergistic action contributes to the construction of media discourse aimed at achieving the optimal result. Among the parameters of the “Smart Tuning” technology, the following are identified: attractiveness, harmonization, patterning, semantic rhythmic modulations, modalization, multymodality, tensity. The performed parameterization demonstrates the significance of the identified parameters for achieving communication efficiency, and their synergy enhances their effect on the addressee. Thunberg’s speech discourse is distinguished by riches of metaphorical constructions, digital data, scientific terms, personal deicticism, direct addresses and threats. Constructing a discourse with hard power, offering one way out of a conflict of interests, the speaker leads the audience courageously, attracting with her straightforwardness, openly expressed position and demands. Unexpected accusations on behalf of a teenager to all world leaders at the top summits are perceived rather positively, causing a stormy response not only from the presidents, the mass media, but also from the working people. Therefore, it can be argued that this speech by Thunberg is attractive; it contributes to a shift in the value estimates of the problem; it is able to redirect the attention of the addressee; it controls discursivization in a hard way, reflecting the seven parameters of effective communication, which form the basis for creating the conception of discourse “smart tuning”, that is, it is constructed technologically. A cognitive model of this Thunberg’s speech is presented. It demonstrates how the tools of this technology make it possible to control discourse and lead the addressee to a given goal.

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