EMOTIONAL VOCABULARY OF THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL

Abstract

This article is devoted to the semantics of emotional vocabulary represented in the German political discourse of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The urgency of the study is due to the need to identify the specifics of the phenomenon in the plane of mental processes, which helps to clarify the nature of the interaction between language and thinking, to find out how to verbalize the knowledge of politics about emotions. The language of politicians is a means and instrument of power, a mechanism for manipulating the mass consciousness, focused more on the intellect of the addressee, his thoughts, emotions, feelings. Being relatively neutral, this language reflects the future context interpreted in the stream of political activity. This context is difficult to deny, impossible to verify, but easy to model. It is about the interests of society, engraved through certain images and even models of enemies or foes. We have got three types of semantics of emotional vocabulary: positive, negative and indefinite. Positive semantics of emotional vocabulary – the carrier of basic, social and cultural emotions – corresponds to the positive attitude of A. Merkel to objects and phenomena of the world, informs about the satisfaction of her needs, actualizes the emergence of positive emotions including joy, happiness, hope, love and more. Negative semantics of emotional vocabulary signals the appropriate attitude to objects and phenomena of the world, manifests a discrepancy between the desired state of affairs and the existing, causes it negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, stress and more. Іndefinite semantics of emotional vocabulary is identical to the Chancellor’s vague attitude to objects and phenomena of the world, characterizes the vagueness of her needs, requests and interests, has no obvious modality, examples of indefinite emotions are fear, silence, indifference. There are two main types of language consciousness: typical and atypical, mediated by the transitional language consciousness. Typicality, non-typicality or transition is determined through quantitative indicators and calculations. It is proved that emotional vocabulary competes with similar phraseological units.