Alternativeness in the discourse of American presidents

In the article constructions with the conjunctions or, either... or, expressing various aspects of alternativeness are investigated in the official speeches of the USA presidents B. Obama, W. Klinton, G. Bush S., G. Bush Jr. The methods of contextual and discourse analysis help to reveal the functional peculiarities of these syntactic structures in the American presidential discourse and their influential potential on the mass audience depending on the communicative situation. The study of the language material showed that constructions with alternative semantics are regularly used in the institutional discourse of American presidents to manipulate the mass consciousness, to disguise information, to instill certain ideas into the recipients' minds and convince them in their truth and righteousness so that the audience would accept the political course necessary for the head of the State. The meanings which constructions with disjunctive conjunctions carry include the following semantic variants of alternativeness: mutual exclusiveness, motivation, alternation, distribution, approximation, enumeration, amendment which appear due to a certain modification of the invariant meaning of alternativeness by different contextual means. Constructions conveying absolute mutual exclusiveness are aimed at making the illusion of choice between good and evil which is amplified by the direct appeal to the audience by means of alternative questions and / or words with the component "choice" in their semantics. The presidents of the USA make use of constructions conveying motivation when they speak about some threat to the state and its citizens, for example, terrorism. No-compromise character of such language units enables the leader to intimidate the enemy and express his determination and readiness for the struggle against it. Due to the meaning of alternation the utterance sounds awe-inspiring and overwhelming and implies the message that the USA is constantly striving for ideal democracy regardless of all the obstacles. With the help of constructions expressing distribution the American presidents try, on the one hand, to threaten opponents, on the other hand, to impress the audience by the quantitative characteristics of the situation or event. The function of amendment performed by constructions with disjunctive conjunctions gives the leader an opportunity to correct a statement thus taking off the responsibility for distorting the facts. Approximate nomination serves for presenting the information to the advantage without precision and exactness. Constructions with enumeration being the most widespread among other syntactic units with conjunctions or and either. or in the presidential discourse often contribute to the depictions of different aspects of the described situation. Thus, constructions with alternative semantics are an essential instrument of manipulating the audience in the discourse of the USA presidents.

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