CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF WAR NARRATIVES IN AMERICAN PRE-ELECTION DISCOURSE: LINGUOPRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The communicative influence on target audiences is a key component of communication during armed conflicts. This influence is often carried out through the use of war narratives – specific multimodal messages about war, designed to influence the target audience. An analysis of the linguopragmatic and cognitive components of war narratives can broaden the scope of research into both communication during armed conflicts and linguistic disciplines such as linguopragmatics, cognitive linguistics and (critical) discourse analysis. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the American pre-election discourse of 2023–2024, as represented by statements made by Donald Trump and his team, which were published in verified international media outlets. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study comprises an adapted three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, the method of linguopragmatic analysis, and the concept of communicative influence and contextual constraints (manipulation) developed by Didier Maillat and Steve Oswald. The main linguopragmatic units of analysis are deixis, implicature and presupposition. The study analyzes the use of deixis and the formation of deictic fields, as well as the decoding of potential implicatures and existing presuppositions. It also examines how these elements may influence the constraints and reinforcement of contextual assumptions that the target audience uses to interpret utterances and determine their relevance.. A potential link has been identified between the use of certain sets of contextual assumptions and the socio-political motivations of narrators. The results of the study indicate that the combined use of the aforementioned linguopragmatic units leads to an increase in the relevance of selections of contextual assumptions by enhancing their accessibility and reinforcing them within the target audience’s cognitive environment, thereby strengthening communicative influence. We consider the following to be relevant areas for further research: corpus-based studies of war narratives, the typology studies of linguopragmatic and linguocognitive units of communicative influence, research utilising critical discourse analysis and its sub-types.