Speech Habit as Basis of Speaker’s Speech Portrait (Based on British Political Discourse)

• Published in: Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serii͡a︡ 2, I͡A︡zykoznanie. I͡A︡zykoznanie., 2016-12, Vol.15 (4)
• Main Authors: Matveeva, Galina G, Zyubina, Irina A
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Subjects: Content analysis; Discourse analysis; Employment; Grammatical number; Political discourse; Prime ministers; Speech
• ISSN: 1998-9911; 2409-1979
• DOI: 10.15688/jvolsu2.2016.4.6

The study which results are summarized in the article is performed on the basis of implicit pragmalinguistics. In particular, some features of grammatical forms use in accordance with the emotiveorientated speech strategy "Participation / non-participation of communicants in a speech event" are considered in the work. This strategy is implemented in three dimensions: personal, social, and objective. To actualize the dimensions an addresser makes a choice of particular grammatical forms. When counting a number of addresser text choices of all three planes we get a picture of his preferences which reflects his usual speech behavior and which can be represented as his speech portrait. In the study the fragments of speech portraits of four representatives of the House of Lords in the Parliament and the Prime Minister of Great Britain are reconstructed and characterized, they are created on the basis of their discourses research which is carried out using probabilistic and statistical method and the method of modified content analysis. It is found out that speech portrait interpretation of an addresser leads to identification of speaker's individual traits, and their interpretation leads to diagnosing his personal traits which are found from an analysis of particular discourse uttered by a particular speaker "here and now".