Communicative leadership in British political discourse: tactics involving the public

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COMMUNICATIVE LEADERSHIP IN BRITISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE: TACTICS INVOLVING THE PUBLIC

Sushkevych O.V.,

PhD in Linguistics, Associate Professor, Department of the English Language and Methodology Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University

Summary

The paper presents the analysis of basic communicative leadership models with corresponding tactics employed by British speakers in a situational political context. In this respect, we take into account societal value orientations, people's demands and needs. The material of our research is experts' interaction with the audience in the daily programme “Politics Live” (2018-2021). Communicative exchange in TV programmes is targeted at winning the more supporters possible that demands from politicians and experts to reveal their leadership talents. During the research, we have singled out 5 basic communicative leadership involving tactic models which speakers operate to attract the audience, their support and potential votes. The models verbalize such sort of interaction, which is based on national priorities in external and internal affairs, general, social values and, correspondently, people's needs and demands. The key to reaching the public lies in leading people being of the same kind they are: thinking, feeling, and speaking the same way ordinary citizens do but with deep expertise and knowledge of the matters under discussion or debate, in our case, in “Politics Live”. Besides, speakers can switch the kinds of communicative leadership in the context, depending on their goals, pragmatic style of interaction with people. Thus, communicative leadership can be leader-centred, shared or mixed. Communicative leadership is a pragmatic component of a politicians' or experts' behaviour in public discussions, the dynamics of which predetermine the outcomes of events and the image of a political force. Being dynamic, this phenomenon largely depends on a speaker's goals, intentions and motives, and situational context. In TV political programmes, communicative leadership develops in interaction with the audience, opponents, and supporters.

Key words: communicative leadership, political discourse, “Politics Live”, speaker, involving tactics, models, interaction.

Introduction. Political communicative exchange in front of a large audience of viewers, opponents and an anchor has become a format of revealing points of view concerning topical issues of internal and external affairs. Such an interaction reaches a wide circle of TV viewers with various political beliefs, high level of social needs and demands [1]. Thus, political TV shows, on the one hand, permit political forces to present attitudes and deeds, on the other hand, to form people's opinions about political leaders and power, the state of affairs in the country and abroad.

Analysis of relevant literature. Enough, the format of TV shows presents “a battlefield” of verbal acts. Every time the speaker has to “fight” for the right to express the ideas of some political force and influence the audience. Once the right got, the speech needs to be effective, up to the point, and the goal [2]. Therefore, everything a large audience knows about political trends in society is associated with some politician who presents them in front of TV cameras, involving people in active or passive discussions. This process is an interplay of interests, influences and stimuli (Fairhurst, 2007 [3]; Balconi, Venturella, 2017 [4]; Backstrom, Ingelsson, Johansson, 2016 [5]).

Thus, the notion of “communicative leadership” comes in front presupposed by the needs to be ahead of rivals influencing the audience and involving them in discussions and taking actions, thus, reaching definite pragmatic goals. This phenomenon belong to softskills [6, p. 91]. Correspondently, “a communicative leader” is a person who engages people “<...> in dialogue, actively shares and seeks feedback, practices participative decision making, and is perceived as open and involved” [7, p. 147]. Being a communicative leader means being a political leader, forming or supporting some force.

Complex research character of communicative leadership emerges at the crossroads of humanities, thus, having interdisciplinary character. It is the field of studies for philosophy, sociology, psychology, philology, pedagogics, politology, history etc.

It should be noted that although communicative leadership is quite a “fresh” term in modern humanities, scientific minds have turned to it from the times of Socrates and Aristotle. Significantly due to the fact, that outstanding orators and leaders have always been changing the humankind and planet from the very early pages of recorded history.

The first works which directly introduce communicative leadership in scientific operation appear in the 1970-90s (Burns, 1978 [8], Smircich, Morgan, 1982 [9]; Bass, 1985, 1990 [10], and others). They discuss this notion from the point of view of its organizational, managemental, and discursive potential and value for society. Starting from the 2000s scientists have made a significant contribution to the development of communication leadership, namely, to optimize the productivity and performance of organizations due to adequate use of communicative leadership styles and kinds (leader-centred, shared or mixed) (Alvesson, Sveningsson, 2003 [11]; Balconi, Venturella, 2017 [4]; Balogun, J., 2006 [12]; Barge, Fairhurst, 2008 [13]; Hamferord, 2011 [14]) and others. Researchers also address communicative leadership as the phenomenon causing social transformations in the given context (Dias-Saenz, 2011 [15]; Fairhurst, 2005 [16]; Brummans, Hwang, Cheong, 2013 [17]; Vizeu, 2011 [18]) and others.

In Ukraine, recent research on communicative leadership addressed the issues of facilitating better models of administration at different levels in education (Kalashnikova, Orzhel, 2019 [19]); comparative analysis of shaping the image of political leaders (Chorna, 2013 [20]). To crown it all, the British Council in Ukraine together with the Institute of Higher Education, NAES launched 3 waves of Leadership Development Programme for HEIs in Ukraine.

Although, humanities have provided fundamental insights into communicative leadership, still, the tactics of involving British ordinary people in political discussions, decision-making and taking actions have not been fully revealed so far.

The objective of our research is to model and analyze basic communicative leadership involving tactic models developed by speakers in the situational political context. In this respect, we take into account societal value orientations, people's demands and needs (according to Maslow's pyramid (1987)). The objective presupposes the following tasks. On the one hand, we aim at grasping functional peculiarities of models use within contextual relativity of objective reality with a definite set of values and national priorities typical for modern British society. On the other hand, we observe the dynamics of tactic models in context and conclude what kind of communicative leadership is dominant - leader-centred, shared or mixed.

Methods, Techniques and Materials of Research. In our research, we operate both general research methods and specific ones according to the objective and tasks of our study. Thus, we made use of the method of modelling and the descriptive method to single out basic communicative leadership involving tactic models in the discourse, their peculiarities in political interaction. Methods of analogy and deduction were applied to provide a complex analysis of the strategic models in the situational context. These methods allowed us to define the peculiarities of speakers' communicative behaviour, to ground its pragmatic reasons and consequences.

With the help of distributive analysis, we established the spread of involving tactic models of communicative leadership distinguishing linguistic markers characteristic for each model. To define the speaker's intentions, motives and pragmatic goals we turned to the method of pragmatic discourse analysis. The elements of mathematic statistics and quantitative analysis were essential while tracing the frequency of models and their markers as well as clichйs occurrence in experts' speeches within each model.

In our research, we have analyzed the national tendencies in communicative leadership in the political battlefields presented by the British political programme “Politics Live” (BBC2) [21] which presents daily stories. We have used 235 series from September 2018 till January 2021.

The Results of the Research and their Discussion. On having analyzed the TV daily political discussions and debates, we have found out that experts develop several basic involving tactic models of communicative leadership.

Tactic model 1. Creating a network of supporters by selfidentification with them.

In this respect, politicians directly associate themselves with the electorate to be closer to them as if representing their interests.

The first use definite linguistic clichйs with the reference to ordinary people on the other side of TV screens, e. g.:

Inclusive WE/1 (political force) = PEOPLE.

The following integrating clichйs are intertextually incorporated into the speeches of politicians. They also enrich their discourse with synonymous words and phrases to people: crowd, protesters, supporters, a group, the whole country, all of the people, all over the country, the majority of voters, etc.

Belonging to people, their goals and needs is also supported by creating a “proper circle” with referential pronouns our, us, e. g. our goal; our struggle; listen to us, etc [20: 11]. The occurrence proves that this tactic model is the top for politicians to create shared communicative leadership.

Table 1

Basic involving tactic models of communicative leadership in political discourse

Such an approach is a supporting pillar to refer to people's interests and rights rather than of a political force. In other words, the more a political leader represents ordinary people, the more he/she creates a network of followers, the bigger the influence of a political force is. The postulate “I'm the one like you” is indirectly decoded being the main point for politicians. Moreover, this tactic model is the way of building relationships with people as if helping and assisting them with their problems, worries, showing commitment. It creates the illusion that people are not left alone or isolated face to face with problematic issues.

Tactic model 2. Gaining followers by criticism of opponents

In British political interaction, two main political forces - The Conservative Party and the Labour Party - are constantly trying to win the votes of people. That is done quite emotionally, sometimes, directly attacking the opponents with arguments, urging tone, remembering stories of success or failure. In this respect, both sides are sure to win some percentage of supporters: one group of people will support the criticism, another - the complexity of a problem, thus, opponents.

The opponents are denoted by the intertextual inclusive THEY who are not like I / WE / PEOPLE, for example:

“The more we safer, the more they get” (Politics Live, 08.04.2019).

“They make us feel foreigners in our own country” (Politics Live, 08.02.2021).

The British strategy of criticism has several components:

Criticism = revealing the situation ^ demanding actions / accusing opponents.

Opponent's reaction: expressing regrets/worries / showing a deep understanding of the situation ^ presenting other factors that influence the problem ^ suggesting the steps to overcome the situation.

Molly Scott, Cato MEP: “The leaders _promised us impossible. It diminished our reputation because we had a very high reputation as being good at politics and it severely damaged that”. (Politics Live, 17.05.2019).

This model is of leader-centred and shared character. On the one hand, speakers employ it to demonstrate their strong side in contrast to a concurrent's weaknesses, lousiness, incompetence resulting in empty promises and failure. On the other hand, the model allows turning to public urging to take actions, to unite around a problematic situation. This model is based on the elements of the previous one.

Tactic model 3. Creating the image of a good/bad leader

As the studio invites leading professionals in the field of the topic for discussion, their points of view are valuable, authoritative and trustworthy. That is the reason why their opinions about current or ideal leaders become of importance forming the targeted audience's vision.

Experts turn to several techniques to evaluate the leader, directly or indirectly identifying proper qualities of such a person, for example, they employ praise and recognition or disapproval. In other words, it is some sort of reaction to what kind of leader a person is, should be or might be, e. g.:

“Corbyn was unfit to be a leader”

“Corbyn will be the leaderforever" (Politics Live, 02.04.2019).

Another technique to form people's opinion on leadership is to provide a personal understanding of this notion, for instance:

“Being a leader we mean taking action and having responsibility”. (Politics Live, 05.04.2020).

“Which leader, which combination of a leader can unite the party?"

One more tool which reveals the essence of a leader, is the reaction to the leader's promises with their further expressive interpretation, for example:

Tom Harwood, Guido Fawkens: “Remember what was said by Theresa May? That we are not afraid to leave with no deal. And I was shocked, surprised and afraid of that notion. It's such a sad, sad position to be in <...>. It's so astonishing that they have such contempt_ for the British people”. (Politics Live, 17.05.2019).

Although this model is not that frequent it is rather effective as it puts a real leader on the scales with an ideal leader. Correspondently, it can be regarded as a tool to develop leader-centred, shared or mixed communicative leadership depending on the speaker's intentions and motives.

Tactic model 4. Being clear and understandable for people

The state of internal or external affairs, as well as the processes in these fields, may seem quite confusing for the ordinary public, especially from a diachronic perspective. Thus, explaining the situation in a very simple manner using the language usual people speak is the way to optimize the communication and leading position in society for political forces.

The British experts usually employ a range of introductory phrases, which help involve the audience in the reflections about the issues being discussed. In some cases, explanations go hand in hand with the personal emotional evaluation of the issues under consideration. Such an approach attracts the attention of a listener stimulating sympathy. Speakers sound quite emphatic:

“It's a dangerous and slippery slope <...>" (Politics Live, 08.02.2021).

“I'm not happy with that <...>" (Politics Live, 07.11.2019).

“They have failed to <...>" (Politics Live, 05.06.2020).

“Why don't we have more <...>?" (Politics live, 21.06.2019).

“It's depressing and upsetting <...>" (Politics Live, 08.04.2019).

Damian Collins MP: “<...> Astra Zeneca vaccine <...> has a very, very high success rate protecting people." “<...> turning deadly virus to a nasty bug" (Politics Live, 07.02.2021).

The model is a working tool for political personalized interaction with people. It helps establish common grounds and understanding, narrowing the distance between experts, the matters they discuss and ordinary citizens. It works for developing leader-centred, shared or mixed communicative leadership.

Tactic model 5. Creating an alternative scenario

The current political situation is an issue for discussions as it may develop in different ways according to the decisions approved and realized. It means that there are several scenarios of potential development. Experts from different fields have their vision of what might be proper in this or that case, presenting their ideas as a possible alternative reality. Such an imaginary development of events finds the supporters in the general public as the TV programme gives the audience a chance to choose the way which is closer for them. Correspondently, the political force suggesting a new scenario based on people's values, expectations and needs influence the latter “dragging” them into their followers.

Typical clichйs with emotional personal colouring can be met in “Politics Live” while formulating alternative ideas.

Speaking to people's minds with arguments:

The logics suggest... The process to get there is... Let's have a look at what can happen... If they do...

Speaking to people's hearts using personal emotive judgements:

It is enough to shift opinion .I don't really believe that everyone wants that... I don't believe people don't want to... It's going to be so far away from what we were promised...It's a lifetime thing influence generations... It's a disaster if it goes...

A bright example in modern British society is the so-called Brexit deal, a document, which is supposed to regulate the conditions of leaving the EU by the UK and regulations on their further relations. The idea of this legendary document “was born” 40 years ago with the first talks about this issue. Since that time up to nowadays, it has grown in its strategic importance and necessity for both the EU and the UK. Some imaginary scenarios have been developed ever since, for example:

Miatta Fahnbulleh, New Economics Foundation: “Whether it is written up positively or negatively depends on certain decisions (out of our control), depends on what Boris Johnson does in negotiations <...> whether Boris Johnson takes the country forward <...>” (Politics Live, 31.12.20).

This tactic model performs the function of involving people with a much better vision of possible reality than they are living now or frightening the public with a negative outcome and perspectives in case the opponent's plans are realized.

Conclusions. Summing up the results of our research, we conclude that communicative leadership is a pragmatic component of a speaker' behaviour in public discussions, the dynamics of which predetermine the outcomes of events and the image of a political force. Being dynamic, this phenomenon largely depends on a speaker's goals, intentions, motives, and situational context. In TV political programmes, communicative leadership develops in interaction with the audience, opponents, and supporters. Experts tend to base their leader-oriented intentions on people's needs, values, high level of demands as well as national strategic interests of Great Britain.

Politicians and experts from various areas of the economy try to “talk” to the general public's hearts and minds. Speakers turn to five basic involving tactic models to reveal their communicative leadership. Employing these models makes political forces closer to the general public, which is achieved due to:

Identifying politicians with the audience; sharing the same worries and problems; showing commitment; being emphatic and sympathetic; being impatient about the kind of leadership in the country and its future; being on the same grounds with people.

British experts reveal all three types of communicative leadership in their speeches (leader-centred, shared, and mixed) with the tendency to switch among them according to the context of discussions or debates.

model communicative leadership british speakers political context

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Сушкевич О.

Комунікативне лідерство у британському політичному дискурсі: тактики залучення громадськості

Анотація. Стаття присвячена моделюванню та аналізу основних тактик комунікативного лідерства мовця, які використовуються ним для залучення громадськості в ситуативному політичному контексті. У цьому відношенні ми враховуємо соціальні ціннісні орієнтації, вимоги та потреби аудиторії. Матеріалом нашого дослідження є взаємодія експертів із аудиторією у щоденній програмі “Politics Live” (2018-2021). Комунікативний обмін у телепрограмах спрямований на завоювання якомога більшої кількості прихильників, що вимагає від політиків та експертів розкрити свої лідерські здібності. Під час дослідження ми виділили 5 основних тактичних моделей комунікативного лідерства, які мовці використовують для залучення аудиторії до обговорень та дій задля підтримки та отримання потенційних голосів. Моделі вербалізують такий тип взаємодії, який базується на національних пріоритетах у зовнішніх та внутрішніх справах, загальних, соціальних цінностях і, відповідно, потребах і запитах людей. Ключ для досягнення прихильності громадськості полягає у досягненні ідентичності з людьми у способі мислення, вираженні почуттів та у манері висловлюватися. Так само, як це роблять звичайні громадяни, але з глибоким досвідом та знанням питань, які обговорюються у “Політиці у прямому ефірі”. Крім того, мовці можуть змінювати види комунікативного лідерства у контексті спілкування, залежно від своїх цілей, прагматичного стилю взаємодії з людьми. Таким чином, комунікативне лідерство може бути орієнтованим на лідера, розподіленим мыж усіма учасниками або змішаним. Комунікативне лідерство - це прагматичний компонент поведінки політиків чи експертів у громадських дискусіях, динаміка яких зумовлює результати подій та імідж політичної сили. Будучи динамічним, це явище значною мірою залежить від цілей, намірів та мотивів мовця та ситуаційного контексту. У телевізійних політичних програмах комунікативне лідерство розвивається у взаємодії з аудиторією, опонентами та прихильниками.

Ключові слова: комунікативне лідерство, політичний дискурс, “Політика у прямому ефірі”, мовець, тактики залучення, модель, взаємодія.

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