Pre-election discourse: new ethnic models

The paper covers a range of issues related to the study of personal South Ossetian pre-election discourse specificity from the standpoint of formation standard strategies for this type of political communication on ethnic grounds in the mode of the bilingual Ossetian-Russian language code. The research was carried out in line with an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the achievements of discourse studies, communication studies, linguistic conceptology, cultural linguistics and linguistic sociology within anthropocentric paradigm. In accordance with the stated directions, the material under consideration is described on the methodological platforms of discursive, contextual and conceptological analysis, comparative and descriptive methods, multifunctionality of introspection and interpretation. The empirical data for sociological, ethnological and cognitive study of the 2017 South Ossetian pre-election campaign linguistic features were the texts of speeches, meetings with voters and initiative groups, debates, statements, election program, materials from the official websites of South Ossetia, as well as scripts of video recordings of the South Ossetian presidential candidate in the republic. Ossetia L.Kh. Tibilov. The relevance and novelty of the research is due to the lack of research on this segment of the South Ossetian political discourse, which is in the formation process, an increased interest to the self-determined state public life. The authors carried out a detailed analysis of the text fragments of L. Kh. Tibilov’s personal discourse as a pre-election race participant and producer of universally significant ethnic values and cognitive models, represented in the dominant political concepts and ideologemes, as well as reference communication strategies and tactics through Ossetian and Russian-language single-channel communications, or the mixed channel of bilingual communication and its genre varieties. The paper describes the status, ritual, ethnical and linguistic characteristics of the candidate’s integration and orientation strategies as prevailing tools for influencing the electorate.

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