Means of Implementing Negative Representation of "Others" Strategy as Markers of G. Bush Jr. and B. Obama's Conceptual Styles

Abstract. the article deals with the speech manipulation as a means of expression of persuasiveness in discourse. Manipulation is treated as a peculiar communicative-speech strategy to influence the addressee in the political discourse, which is implemented through a set of tactics. The selection of tactics is greatly affected by the conceptual style of the author of political discourse. The article deals with the analysis of the tactics, through which the strategy of negative presentation of “others” is realized, namely, the tactics of “Super-Generality” and “Exemplification”. These tactics are treated as the markers of conceptual styles of the USA Presidents G. Bush Jr. and B. Obama. It has been proved, the speech peculiarities of persons with different conceptual styles predetermine higher frequency of some tactics and, consequently, lower frequency of other tactics. The tactics of “Exemplification” consists in transferring the features, which generally characterize some specific ethnic (or other) group onto the certain individual or the single event. This tactics may be considered to be typical for the discourse of G. Bush Jr., whose conceptual style is analytical. It is caused by such characteristics of the speech of persons with analytical style as deductiveness and the tendency to the excessive use of labels. Inductiveness of B. Obama’s speech whose conceptual style is relational, explains higher frequency of the tactics of “Super-Generality” in his discourse. The tactics of “Super-Generality” consists in generalizing some unitary model, some aspects of unitary experience to soma group scheme.