Verbal Means Expressing a Negative Assessment Used to Create a Negative Image of J. Biden in the US Oppositional Political Discourse

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of verbal means expressing a negative assessment used to create a negative image of J. Biden in the US oppositional political discourse. The definition of assessment and assessment act is given, its structure is determined. The main signs and features of the oppositional political discourse are described. The evaluative structures of the negative assessment type used by the leading US opposition journalists M. Kelly and T. Carlson are analyzed. In the course of the analysis, it was found out that a negative assessment in the oppositional political discourse is expressed by multi-level linguistic means, which are either accurately explicated in the language or contextually conditioned, that is, they are rendered mainly connotatively. With the help of these means, one of the main strategies of the oppositional political discourse is implemented - the strategy of downgrading, that is, the creation of an anti-image of a political figure. The speech tactics that ensure the success of the implementation of this strategy include the tactics of negative analysis, accusations, denunciations, discrediting, mockery, and others. The explicit means creating a negative assessment include the use of expressive vocabulary with a pronounced seme of a negative assessment, the use of amplifying discursive elements (expressives), the use of morphemes, lexemes and syntactic structures with negative semantics, the use of various invective verbal means. Implicit means, where a negative assessment is generated under the influence of the context, include the use of expressive syntax (interrogative and exclamatory sentences, short sentences, sentences built on the principle of antithesis), the use of metaphors, including extended ones, irony and sarcasm, lexical units subjected to pejoratization in a certain context, depersonification (reverse personification). The combination of these verbal means enhances the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects and leads to the creation of an anti-image of a political figure, which is one of the main goals of the oppositional political discourse.