Linguistic-cognitive and communicative-pragmatic features of a politician’s speech activity in a discursive position “after power”

Abstract

The cognitive and speech activity of the linguistic personality of a politician in the discursive position “after power” has a number of significant differences in comparison with the stages “before power” and “in power”. Its general cognitive and communicative-pragmatic character that can be described as accumulative-syncretic, adaptive and agonal, is due, firstly, to the seamless combination of substantive-thematic and speech signals of the personal and political past experiences. These experiences are projected onto the issues of the supra-individual present and included in the forecasts of the social future. These signals are present in texts generated by the politician during the post-power period. There is a subject-object “stratification” with a different balance of a subject and/or object functional status in the structure of the linguistic personality of the post-power politician. As a (proactive) subject of cognition and communication, the politician “after power” creates his/her own texts, primarily memoirs and (oral) political speeches. Becoming the object of evaluation, the politician verbally responds to them as a mental-speech subject of speech utterances in communicative situations of interviews, political discussions, public responses to articles of other politicians or comments of journalists that are close or distant to the other side of the communication. At the same time, being an object, not only with social and professional functions, but also personal qualities of the ex-politician are publicly discussed, which indicates the mandatory combination of institutional, professional and individual (third-party) assessment parameters in the structure of his/her personality.