COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES AND TACTICS OF INFLUENCE IN MODERN INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL DISCOURSE: THE STRATEGY OF SELF-PRESENTATION

Abstract

This article is devoted to the investigation of the self-presentation strategy as one of the fundamental components of communicative influence within modern international political discourse. The primary focus of the research is centred on the specific tactics employed to implement the communicative strategy of self-presentation in the speeches of prominent global political figures. The empirical material for this study comprises the texts of five special addresses delivered during the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos (19–23 January 2026). The corpus of the study includes speeches by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the President of the United States, Donald Trump; the President of France, Emmanuel Macron; the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney; and the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The total volume of the analysed corpus amounts to approximately 25,000 words. A comprehensive analysis of the communicative tactics within the self-presentation strategy as realised in these speeches has been conducted, highlighting the most potent manifestations within the scope of this paper. Furthermore, the study identifies specific linguistic and stylistic devices that serve to amplify the impact of the applied tactics. The findings of the analysis demonstrate that while all five speakers actively implement a self-presentation strategy, they utilise distinct dominant tactics that reflect both their individual rhetorical characteristics and the geopolitical standing of the states or institutions they represent. Among the most powerful tactics identified are self-promotion, subjective and objective informing, transference, the identification of the speaker with their country, people, or international institution, as well as demonstrations of professionalism and social interaction. Within the implementation of these outlined tactics, several linguistic devices were recorded, including anaphora, antithesis, hyperbole, rhetorical questions, aphorisms, extended allusions, and parallelism.