Media Linguistic Features of Russian and American Presidential Election Debates

This article is devoted to comparing of media linguistic features of Russian and American presidential debates. The emotionally-saturated elements of speech of Russian and American politicians are described in this research, and the analysis of communicative intentions due to the format of the debate itself is made. The analysis is based on the material of the presidential TV debates held in Russia in 2018 and in the United States in 2016. The aim of the research is achieved by applying a comparative method and a complex method of lexical-semantic, stylistic, and emotive analysis. The relevance of the research stems from the high degree of the importance of the format of presidential debates in the political media discourse and from the fact that many researchers are interested in studying communicative behavior of the language personality of a politician. The analysis of the material shows that the American presidential debates differ significantly from the Russian ones, though they have some similar features. Within the Russian presidential debates, there is a wider than within the American debates the variety of ideas and meanings, which contributes to the achievement of a plurality of views. The US debates demonstrate the ideological pressure on the manifestations of the language personality of a politician, who is forced to act as a part of a formally declared unavoidable party affiliation. The communication within Russian debates is more spontaneous, natural, and saturated with emotional elements. In the American debates, the dialogue between the parties is conducted based on a pedantic following the format. Such a dialogue can be characterized as a discrete set of pre-prepared monologues. A common feature of Russian and American debates is the expectation that politicians will use some cognitive and emotional reporting patterns.