Effective markers of suggestiveness in contemporary political discourse (morphological-cognitive aspect)

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EFFECTIVE MARKERS OF SUGGESTIVENESS IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL DISCOURSE (MORPHOLOGICAL-COGNITIVE ASPECT)

Babii Yu.B.

Mykolaiv V.O. Sukhomlynskyi National University

Sadova H. Yu.

Mykolaiv V.O. Sukhomlynskyi National University

The article is devoted to clarification of problems of political advertising discourse in the system of cultural and value priorities of modern society. The relevance of the selected issue has been outlined. It is conditioned by the scientists' interest in the phenomenon of advertising as a modern means of suggestive influence on the masses, and the necessity of its research in connection with the change of man's literary-centric thinking into advertising-centric one. The article emphasizes the present problem of the research, which is expressed by conducting a comprehensive analysis of advertising as a cultural practice and a form of social interaction that can influence the formation of social consciousness. In the research, advertising discourse is treated as a whole complex of relations, which are represented in the process of origin, formation, development and functioning of an advertising text. Also, advertising discourse is interpreted as a cognitive process related to the creation of a text, its suggestiveness, and ultimate purpose. In the context of the chosen research direction priority, the study of political advertising discourse in other aspects, in particular linguacultural, semiotic, gender, comparative, functionally pragmatic, communicative and others, has been conducted in detail. Particular attention has been paid to the morphological-cognitive principle of analysis. In the course of the research, the corpus of verbal dominants, shaping the suggestogenic nature of the politically oriented advertising text, has been considered. Such concepts as to win, to promise, and to gain have been considered among such verbal dominants. The basic universal and culturally specific ways of political advertising suggestiveness have been formulated on the basis of the verbal linguistic dominants interpretation, the content and functional structure of such verbal markers have been described. The meaning of the morphological nature of key conceptual units of the verbal character has been generalized, which promotes the memorization of advertising, and expresses its manipulative effect. Grammatical categories of tense, mood, and aspect have been among such units. Key words: advertising discourse, communication, advertising text, concept, verbal dominant, suggestive influence.

Бабій Ю.Б., Садова Г.Ю. ДІЄСЛІВНІ МАРКЕРИ СУНЕСТОГЕННОСТІ СУЧАСНОГО ПОЛІТИЧНОГО ДИСКУРСУ (МОРФОЛОГО-КОГНІТИВНИЙ АСПЕКТ)

Статтю присвячено з'ясуванню проблематики політичного рекламного дискурсу в системі культурно-ціннісних пріоритетів сучасного соціуму. Окреслено актуальність обраної проблеми, що зумовлена зацікавленістю науковців у самому феномені реклами як сучасного інструменту сугестивного впливу на маси та необхідністю його дослідження у зв'язку зі зміною літературоцентричного мислення людини на рекламоцентричне. У статті наголошено на сучасності досліджуваної проблеми, що увиразнюється проведенням комплексного аналізу реклами як культурної практики та форми суспільної взаємодії, здатної впливати на формування суспільної свідомості.

У роботі рекламний дискурс інтерпретовано як когнітивний процес, пов'язаний зі створенням тексту, його сугестогенністю та кінцевим призначенням. Деталізовано вивчення політичного рекламного дискурсу в інших аспектах, зокрема лінгвокультурологічному, семіотичному, гендерному, зіставному, функціонально-прагматичному, комунікативному тощо. Окрему увагу приділено морфолого-когнітивному принципу аналізу. Для реалізації поставленої мети розглянуто корпус дієслівних домінант, що формують сугестогенну природу рекламного тексту політичного спрямування.

З-поміж них описано найпродуктивніші концептуальні домінанти «перемагати», «обіцяти», «вигравати». На основі інтерпретації концептуальної природи дієслівних домінант сформульовано основні універсальні та культуроспецифічні шляхи сугестогенності політичної реклами, описано зміст і функціональну структуру таких вербальних маркерів. Також системно узагальнено значення морфологічної природи ключових концептуальних одиниць дієслівного характеру, що сприяє запам'ятовуванню реклами, увиразнює її маніпулятивний ефект. Це, зокрема, граматичні категорії часу, способу, виду.

Ключові слова: рекламний дискурс, комунікація, рекламний текст, концепт, дієслівні домінанти, сугестивний вплив.

political linguacultural pragmatic semiotic

Introduction

None of the elements of the communicative technologies complex has such opportunities of psychological influence on the consumer as advertising, which determines its special role in shaping tastes, values, and preferences. Advertising discourse is defined as the whole complex of relationships that are revealed in the process of origin, formation, development and functioning of the advertising text. In other words, advertising discourse is a cognitive process associated with the creation of a text, its suggestiveness, and ultimate purpose. Whereas an advertising text is a linguistic segment, a product of speech and thinking, through which the communicator and the recipient come into certain social relationships [2].

The relevance of the research of an advertising discourse is, on the one hand, due to the scientists' interest in the phenomenon of advertising as a modern means of suggestive influence on the masses, and, on the other hand, the necessity of its research in connection with the change of the man's literature-centric thinking to advertising-centric one: an advertising text is recognized as one of the leading forms of communication in the modern society, together with its internal aspects and external relations is the original reality of philology. The present problematic is represented by the implementation of a comprehensive analysis of advertising as a cultural practice and social interaction form, which allows interpreting it as a means for shaping public consciousness, tastes, and priorities.

Main material

The existence of contradicting social, economic and political interests in today's society requires both their harmonization and, in general, an atmosphere of trust between their speakers, one of which is the language. An important role in this process belongs to the dialogue between authorities and citizens, their associations, ensuring communication between participants of political relations. Establishing partnerships between the political life subjects makes the study of political communication issues relevant.

For Ukraine, the relevance of the outlined problem is exacerbated by the high degree of citizens' lack of confidence in the current government. This degree is caused by a number of reasons, including the discrepancy between the promises before the elections and their fulfillment after the end of the election campaign; sharp disputes and conflicts between the government and the opposition, etc. Therefore, modern scholars' appeal to political advertising discourse in the aspect of cultural and value priorities of a modern society is relevant, because it is considered as a mechanism by which the existence and development of human relations, encompassing all mental symbols, means of their transmission in space and preservation in time.

The relevance of the research is also motivated by the rapid development of mass communication, in particular in the field of advertising and PR-technologies. Suggestive features of the words usage in advertising texts, elucidation of the psycholinguistic nature of individual linguistic elements (in particular, semantic, and grammatical), linguistic interpretation of the language standard of advertising products are the issues increasingly requiring scientific grounding.

The purpose of the research is to analyse the corpus of verbal markers that create the suggestogenic nature of the politically oriented advertising text, in terms of their conceptual meaning and morphological structure. The purpose ledtothe solution of the following tasks: to identify the features of the contemporary political discourse; to distinguish realization of verbal markers used in political texts; to make a generalized description of the key conceptual units of the verbal character that contribute to the memorization of advertising, expressing its manipulative effect; to determine the role of the morphological nature of verbal suggest genes in the process of shaping the accessibility of advertising and its effectiveness, in particular, to describe the marking of political texts by verbal categories of tense, mood and aspect.

The object of the research is the variety of contemporary advertising discourse products, in particular politically oriented texts in the form of political slogans, agitation political programs of candidates for the post of president of Ukraine, political speeches, speeches, commercials, as well as advertising messages of social direction.

The subject of the research is the system of verbal markers in the texts of non-commercial advertising, which realize the main purpose of the advertising message that is to form values, stimulate to active actions, and manipulate the recipient's consciousness. In this sense, the study of advertising texts is one of the priority spheres for the modern linguistics of the text development and is carried out in linguacultural (V. Buhrim, V. Karasyk), semiotic (R. Bart, A. Prylutskaya), gender (T. Bureychak, O. Kis), comparative (A. Vuhman, I. Horodetska), functionally pragmatic (L. Herashchenko, V. Zirka), communicative (T. Krutko, L. Khavkina) and other aspects. Advertising texts systematically becomes the subject of attention of researchers within the framework of the general theory of advertising and the concept of discourse in national (Y. Bulyk, M. Holianych) and foreign linguistics (A. Dayan, V. Krasnykh), which affirms the discourse characteristics of the advertising message that affect the perception of advertising texts as a sign fixation of advertising discourse.

In this context, it is possible to study the language as a universal cognitive mechanism, a cognitive instrument of political discourse - a system of signs playing a role in the representation (coding) and transformation of political information. Language is a means of information organizing, processing and transmitting. It is not studied independently, but in terms of reflecting the world in the human mind and ways of conceptualizing the world, general principles of categorization and information processing mechanisms, as well as the way in which the language reflects the people's cognitive experience and the impact of the environment. Being an integral part of cognition, language reflects the interplay of communicative, aesthetic and suggestive factors that are crucial in the context of political communication.

The validity and authenticity of the research main provisions has been ensured by the correct application of methods and techniques of analysis, with which the proper amount of factual material has been processed. In particular the methods of conceptual analysis, dictionary definition, and the formal- semantic one have been applied.

In the structure of advertising discourse, there are many means of suggestion at all linguistic levels such as the systematic use of keywords, phonostylistict means of influence, language game, the realization of ambiguity, word-there are uses multiple levels of suggestive actualization, which more often contributes to the suggestive identification of the advertisement in the recipient's mind - the ad is enjoyed, remembered, shaping the images, thus enhancing the consumer's suggestive effect.

Advertising is not only a multifunctional, but also a multidimensional phenomenon of mass communication. Depending on the ultimate goal, advertising may be commercial and non-commercial (political, social). The purpose of commercial advertising is to profit from the sale of goods. Political advertising provides solutions to issues such as gaining power, influencing the processes of state or city government, the PR of political parties and more. The analysis of modern advertising samples shows that the dominant possibilities of the verb are directly dependent on the type of advertising and its purpose. There is a tendency towards the preferences of particular verbs in their grammatical representations, depending on the targeting of the advertising text.

Creating non-commercial advertising text requires taking into account two aspects, functional and content. In this regard, it is reasonable to disclose the semantic accent of the verb for the sake of a good suggestion on the recipient [6].

In our study, an attempt has been made to determine the suggestive actualization from a linguistic perspective. By this term we mean the correlation of the lexical and morphological aspects of the effectiveness of the advertising texts content, which reflects their conceptual nature. The grammatical nature of political advertising has been presented in detail on the example of verbal suggest genes, which, in our opinion, are one of the main methods of persuasion in the advertising message. This grammatical nature is a phenomenon not only in the political sphere, but also in linguistic reality, since it adjusts the deep psychic layers of society, draws attention to major political problems, each time exacerbating the influential effect of inexhaustible of topical issues, ensuring the development of relations between people and authorities.

More than 80 political advertising texts created by the campaigns of the leading Ukrainian parties and politicians between 2018-2019 have been analyzed in the research. Having carried out the semantic analysis of verbs used in political advertising texts capable of having a suggestive influence on the recipient, it was determined that the semantic nucleus of such verbs has been determined to contain such concepts as desire, movement, gain, and promise.

The semantic meaning of the concept “desire” is embodied in political advertising texts with the help of verbal suggestogenes want, seek, need, dream, etc. For example, “The city needs development!” (Andriy Kulchytsky), “I dream of a happy future for Ukraine!” (Yulia Timoshenko). Suggestive strategies of using such verbal dominants are completely motivated, in our opinion, since they all indicate future action, which systematically increases the suggestive influence of such an advertising political text aimed at the recipient's subconscious.

The semantic family of words with the central concept “рух” (movement) has different shades of meaning: розвиток (розвиватися), відновлення (відновлюватися, оновлюватися), прогрес (здійснювати прорив) тощо / development (develop), recovery (restore, recover, renew), progress (make a breakthrough), etc. These shades are realized in the advertising texts by the verbs йти (to go), відновити (to recover), розвивати (to develop), змінити (to change), for example: “Only a strong leader will restore peace!” (Batkivshchyna (Motherland) Party), “To change everything for the Ukrainians' benefit!” (Oleh Tiahnybok). Encouragement to perform this or that action always precedes the fact of doing / not doing the action itself, that is why verbal dominants with the mentioned semantics are extremely convenient for such a type of advertising as political.

In this functional aspect, political campaigns create advertising slogans with the words зупинити (to stop), припинити (to put an end), заборонити (to forbid) as antonyms to the verbal conceptual sphere of the word “рух” (movement): “We will stop them!” (Yulia Tymoshenko), “Let's break up prosecutors and judges!”, “Let's put an end to/Forbid the sale of land!” (Oleh Liashko).

Suggestive validity with “gain” semantics is focused on the verb “перемагати” (win). At the same time, the context of advertising messages concerns not only the victory in the elections, but also the victory of the country and the Ukrainians over the aggressor and over their problems, for example: “<...> success is possible, and we have showen it in Lviv. So go ahead and win!” (Andrey Sadovyi), “We will defeat the aggressor again! Only together! Only forward!” (Petro Poroshenko). This is explained by the ambiguity of the verb “to win”, as indicated by its dictionary definitions (1. To win; 2. To emerge victorious; 3. To overcome; 4. To overpower; 5. To cope).

The “обіцянка” (“promise”) concept realizes its semantics into political advertising texts with the help of the verb dominants обіцяю, гарантую (to guarantee, to promise). For example, “I guarantee the price of gas for the population will be halved” (Yulia Tymoshenko), “Dear Ukrainians, I promise you to go to the President of Ukraine, and I will do it immediately!” (Vladimir Zelensky). The corpus of such verbs clearly shows the “marginal” (final, indisputable) semantics, which implies maximum trust in the author of the political slogan, which is important in the context of this type of advertising.

It should be noted that the most relevant semantic cores in 2019 were the concepts of “захист” (“protection”) and “віра” (“belief'). This urgency is caused by the war in the east of Ukraine and the struggle to obtain the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. Accordingly, these concepts implement their semantics by using the verbs вірити (to believe), боронити (to defend), захищати (to protect): “Produce Ukrainian! Buy Ukrainian! Defend Ukrainian, because it's yours!” (Yuriy Kostenko), “A Ukrainian, protect your rights! Don't let your own dignity be trampled!” (Yuriy Lutsenko); “I believe in Ukraine! I believe in Ukrainians!” (Yulia Timoshenko). The established corpus of verbal dominants causes the recipient only positive associations of peace, victories, confidence in the future, and, therefore, they are maximally suggestogenic.

So, principle assessment of political advertising consists of two components. On the one hand, it is an assessment of the degree of its informative value, which is achieved through the used and perceived cognitive dominants, and determines the level of relative confidence in the reported and the productivity of the reported, on the other hand it is the degree of manipulative capability on the part of such advertisements, which are clearly represented by language verbal markers and their conceptual specifications.

As political texts are written to inform, persuade, and encourage to vote for a particular candidate, the main components of such a text are: 1) cognitive (it provides the voter with information, new knowledge); 2) affective, which should form the necessary emotional attitude; 3) regulatory, which stimulates specific actions.

At the previous stage of the research, it was found that the verbal concepts and their verbal markers take a prominent place among the linguistic means that facilitate the implementation of political texts in the cognitive sense. The realization of the second and thirdco mpone ntsisconditi onedbythe grammatical nature of verbal units - grammatical categories, forms of expression, through which the text touches the emotional sphere, becomes logical, consistent, and presents the realities of perspective or states facts that have already taken place. Therefore, in political discourse, morphological markers of suggestion expression are: temporal affiliation of verbs; types of ratio; performance characteristics; use of personal and impersonal forms; numerical and generic features of individual verb forms.

It is stated that the expression of political direction texts suggestion is verbalized at the level of three tense forms of verbs. The concept of time is one of the basic linguistic concepts. In the last decade, time has been studied as a universal cognitive formation, embodied in language and discourse (V. Zinchenko, L. Liubinska and S. Liepilin), and as a national- cultural phenomenon (Yu. S. Beloziorova, V. Evans, R. Nunez,). Grammar tense in morphology is usually understood as the relation of the moment of action, denoted by the verb, to the moment of speech. The main feature of the concept of tense is its duality: tense is either distancing the subject and the object of observation, or engaging the subject of observation in the formation of the image of the object, its associative characteristics, and, therefore, suggests “Need emotions” from the advertised to the recipient. Human consciousness actively reflects events occurring over time and imparts primarily a verb whose categorical value is procedural in the broad sense. Therefore, the temporal value is inherent in the verb.

The tense range of the verbs used in discourse segments of the political theme contains some gradation from the past tense to the present, where the past tense (15%) symbolically indicates the problem, the present tense (25%) indicates how to solve it, and the future (60%) focuses the audience for the future, embodies the desire to instil confidence in the prospects: “We have made this choice together on the Maidan!”; “We remember what the city began to turn into during Granaturov's time! We don't want Nikolaev to become a freelance regional center!”. The audience focused on the perception of political information is interested not only in the fact when the action is taking place, but also in its process and final result. That is why modern politicians, speaking of their experience, their activities and achievements, use the verb dominant in the form of the past tense. Verbal suggest genes nowadays actualize the need for an object (product) of advertising, create an atmosphere of presence and stimulate the active fulfilment of the advertised requirements. The verbalization of the political context by the forms of the future tense is conditioned by the perlocutionary effect of communication that is the outlining of political perspectives increases the agitation nature of such expression.

Infinitive constructions are often used to indicate future action and express the inevitability, necessity, obligation and categorical nature of the action and are rather common in political programs. For example, реформувати, створити, запровадити, провести, зупинити, (reform, create, implement, carry out, stop).

The mood of the verb is also the main means of expressing the agitation function of political discourse examples. Verbs expressing the speaker's will - command, demand, urge, etc., the wish to perform the desired action or to acquire the desired process or state - find a good context in terms of perspective (64%): “Now that you know their full team, don't fool yourself, don't sell your suffrage! Vote for the candidate running for the party you believe in! Vote for him! Only then things will change for the better in Ukraine!” A series of verbs in the form of the Imperative mood of the 2nd person plural indicates the mass addressee which the speaker also counts on, prompting him to take an active action in politics. The explicit imperative mood makes it possible to use these forms as main grammatical means of the political communication agitation function realization, for example: “Citizens of Mykolaiv! Let us think together with O. Senkevich about our children and grandchildren tomorrow. Let's elect him our mayor! Citizens of Mykolaiv, don't let yourselves be fooled!”. The use of imperative forms in political discourse is possible due to the fact that the speaker may induce the action or acquisition of the status of those who do not directly participate in the act of communication with him.

The meaning of imperativeness in different types of discourses can be conveyed by infinitives that contain a semantic shade of a categorical nature: “You elect - not all politicians are the same”; “It is enough to make empty promises and soothe voters' eyes with temporary benefits during the election campaign! We must not promise, but do <...>”. However, the infinitive has a high degree of categorical nature that is not characteristic of political discourse, where the information is given not only to “influence” but also to “be liked”.

Verbal markers of the Indicative mood (30%) indicate the reality of what was going on, is going on, or is going to happen, for example: “We remember how the country was plundered, the sanatoriums were destroyed and factories fell into decay. We do not want to pay the chaps. We do not want to bribe officials”. In a Conditional mood, a verb indicates the desired action or one that can occur under certain conditions: “Would you like to live in a prosperous country? Then you should join us! Party “Sluha Narodu (People's Servant)”. Such conditionality (6%) interferes with the main purpose of political communication because it arouses addressees' doubts.

The aspect of the verb also contributes to the implementation of the suggestive effect of political texts. Both the verbs of the perfective aspect (зробив, відстояв, проголосував, зреалізував) / (made, defended, voted, realized) and the imperfective aspect (думати, вибирати, голосувати, доводити) / (to think, to choose, to vote, to prove) demonstrate the suggestive influence. The perfective aspect creates confidence in the advertised, suggestively adjusts the recipient to a positive impression of the stated, and reinforces the completion of the action, gives a shade of evidence, reasoning, while the imperfective aspect opens the prospects for the audience in making crucial decisions.

The grammatical form of the verb gender is rarely used as an accentuating suggestive means of the political text. It cannot be seen in echo-phrases or slogans, because it gives an understanding of gender identity, and political (especially advertising) text is in its turn characterized by mass orientation.

Among other morphological features, we state the presence of a large number of verbal nouns in political texts. They create a general idea of the action and provide unambiguity. As a rule, these are nouns end in -ння and -ція and denote procedural meanings (збереження, відтворення, збільшення, налагодження) / (preservation, reproduction, enlargement, setting up) and abstract concepts (модернізація, реструктуризація, інвентаризація) / (modernization, restructuring, inventory). This type of lexemes usage gives extra dynamism and efficiency to the text.

Thus, a political discourse is used as a verbal form of power, as a means of influencing a large audience. The task of a political discourse is to influence people's consciousness in order to achieve a certain goal - to explain, justify, and sometimes even magnify certain conditions in which society exists, to provoke the necessary reaction, as well as to induce certain actions to convince the majority of the population to the correctness of their actions and the appropriateness of their stay in power. As a result of the analysis, it has been concluded that the suggestion of political direction texts at the morphological level is marked by a verbal categories of tense, mood and aspect.

Conclusions

So, in the course of the research it has been proved that the formation of suggestive potential of advertising political discourse is realized through various linguistic means that determine the verbal and cognitive specificity of advertising. Political advertising realizes its appeal to the addressee through the prism of grammatical, in particular morphological means, and achieves the suggestion effect by semantics of key verbal concepts with a multifunctional focus.

The conducted research has some theoretical value, which is realized in the deeper study of the suggestive potential of modern advertising by means of verbal representation, and the obtained results emphasize the role of language morphological means (in particular, verbs and their grammatical categories) in the perception of the advertising message as a piece of discourse genre.

Taking this into account, the prospects of the conducted research are obvious. Further consideration of the amplitude of political discourse basic verbal concepts is probable, since with the change of political structure and social conditions, new cognitive interpretations of these concepts are quite possible. The prospect of the chosen subject of the research is also seen in the fact that advertising attracts attention, generates consumers' interest in the product or service, gives them a pleasant image or a positive attitude to the advertised thing, stimulates to active consumer actions through the usual suggestive mechanisms (nouns, synonymous adjectives, punctuation marks in texts of advertising), it often happens that elementary advertising context generates a number of symbolic values in recipients, and, consequently, their linguistic nature can be described in the context of other parts of speech suggest genes.

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