ACCENTUATION OF FAMILY IMAGE AS IMAGE INTENSIFICATION COMPONENTS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

This article focuses on the trends implying the creation and presentation of the image of a politician and his family in the media political discourse, as well as on their impact on shaping and maintaining an image status within predictive strategies of real action. The author defines the concept of the “personal brand” and offers an analysis of the degree of its dependence on the means of media presentation and self-presentation, as well as forecasting public authority. The goals of creating and promoting the politician's image components, and its criteria in view of self-presentation are also identified here. Special attention is paid to the latest trends in the image representation related to Donald Trump and his family in public speeches in the media space. To this end, there has been an analysis carried out aimed at studying American Internet items about each of the family members of the US 45th President, which allows giving a clear idea of the development of a specific family image in the image of a political figure in the media, analyzing them, in order to intensify or compromise each of them, and describing the means by which the paradoxical effect of weakening the public authority in media discourse is achieved. The main method to discover the features of the family image influence degree on politician's personal brand is discourse-analysis supplied with some techniques of linguocultural and social pragmatic linguistic modelling of communicative interaction. There is an identification of the degree to which the mass media influence the political image, and through it – the promotion of the politician's personal brand and public authority. Based on the study outcomes, the author concludes that a politician's image components depend on the degree of family relations accentuation within the concept-value space of the politician viewed as an individual, which is determined by the frequency and adequacy of media discursive means of intensification, whereas the personal brand, in turn, has a dominant impact on the politician's public policies and credibility, as well as on his family image in the media. Given this dichotomous mutual effect, a positive or negative self-presentation of a political figure is performed.