RHETORICAL DEVICES IN THE AMERICAN LEADERS’ POLITICAL SPEECHES AS THE MANIPULATION WAYS OF THE CITIZENS’ PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

Increasing of language contacts, globalization and internationalization of public relations, expansion of modern informationtechnologies encourage a comprehensive study of modern English communication. Political activity has always playeda special role in society. An important role in determining the country’s international image is played by its presentation bythe country’s political leaders. With the help of speeches, politicians have the opportunity to address both the internationalcommunity and the citizens of their country. Direct contact with the audience determines the choice of lexical, syntacticand phonetic means in the design of speech. Political speeches have three main functions: the communication function,the announcement function and the influence function. American oratory theorists point to the need for the speaker to concentrate on composing his speech, taking into account the audience reaction what he is trying to provoke. Muchattention in the American oratory theory is paid to the speech compositional construction. One of the political discoursegenres is political speech. Presidential political speech is an oral political text, which is proclaimed by the president toa mass audience, sets urgent tasks in a particular sphere of public life, and gives recommendations for the implementationof tasks. It performs the functions of persuasion, agitation, congratulations, has a pre-created script, which depends onthe communicative situation. The construction of a political speech is based on the principle of argumentation (introduction,main part, final part), which facilitates the speech audience perception. The study was based on the political speeches textsof two American presidents – John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The analyzedspeeches have different topics: inaugural addresses of presidents, comments during hostilities and diplomatic (deliveredduring visits). The article highlights the concept of political discourse; it’s identified and described the main types of politicalspeeches; revealed the linguistic and stylistic features and expression means of John F. Kennedy’s; Ronald Reagan;Hillary Clinton political speeches.