Communicative move “indirect insult” in a political talk show (based on Tucker Carlson Tonight)
- DOI
- 10.5922/vestnikpsy-2025-1-2
- Pages
- 18—30
Abstract
The relevance of this research topic is determined by the growing interest of linguists in studying the means of verbalizing speech aggression in the discourse of politicians and political commentators. This interest is reflected in the analysis of the repertoire of speech strategies employed, implemented through specific tactics and represented by particular speech moves and linguistic means. The study analyzes the speech move “indirect insult,” which actualizes the tactic of insult within the speech-behavioral strategy of discrediting the President Biden administration, aiming to identify the linguistic means of expressing this speech move. Three groups of lexical means (non-normative, colloquial lexical units, and lexical units with negative connotations) and three groups of stylistic devices (means of imagery creation, descriptive and attributive means, and expressive syntactic devices) were identified, along with a set of characteristic grammatical constructions that objectify the speech move “indirect insult.” It was established that lexical units of high, medium, and low degrees of invectiveness, according to the scale of invective lexicon developed by A. N. Pachina and I. V. Pekarskaya, determine the occurrence of an indirect insult, while grammatical constructions and expressive syntactic means serve as auxiliary elements in manifesting this speech move.