Communicative strategy of promoting Donald Trump’s positive image in political twitting
Abstract
This article focuses on the communicative strategy of promoting Donald Trump’s positive image in political twitting. It analyses the concepts of political twitting, image, and communicative strategy. It also investigates the hierarchical organization of the global communicative strategy of political discourse that aims to exert communicative influence in order to seize and retain political power. In the article, I determine the place occupied in this hierarchy by the local strategy of promoting a positive image as well as its subordinate local sub-strategies and rhetorical techniques implementing them. The local sub-strategies are differentiated according to the type of values. These values underlie the various communicative roles which altogether make up the image. The sub-strategies of the patriotism demonstration (that renders the communicative role of the PATRIOT) and the faith demonstration (that stands for the communicative role of the BELIEver) are rooted in ethical values. The sociocultural values of masculine American society underlie the sub-strategies of the economic efficiency demonstration (rendering the communicative role of the EFFicient ECONOMIC MANAGER), the power demonstration (suggesting the communicative role of the tough POLITICAL LEADER), and the demonstration of popularity (standing for the communicative role of the POPULAR POLITICAL LEADER). The familiarization with the electorate sub-strategy (that renders the communicative role of the buddy) is based on social group values. These sub-strategies are implemented by the rhetorical techniques of influencing the addressee, focused on different spheres of the human psyche: the sphere of rational reasoning (argumentation), emotions and sensations (declaration and emotive contagion), and volition (instruction). The dominant communicative role of Trump is of the PATRIOT, which is built on the basis of the sub-strategy of the patriotism demonstration. Its analysis ascertains that these rhetorical techniques are predominantly interwoven within one tweet, simultaneously affecting several spheres of the recipient’s psyche.
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References
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