STYLISTIC FEATURES OF THE GERMAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE THEMATIZING THE RUSSIAN WAR IN UKRAINE (USING THE EXAMPLE OF THE PRESSURE TOPOS / DRUCK-TOPOS)

Abstract

The article examines the linguistic and stylistic features of the political discourse thematizing the Russian war in Ukraine. The analysis was carried out on the basis of the German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, Tageszeitung, Neues Deutschland from the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian aggressor on February 24, 2022. The purpose of the article is to find language argumentative patterns that reflect the public consciousness, values and views of the members of the Western European public space with regard to the supply of weapons to Ukraine on the basis of a topos analysis of the German-language mass media. Taking into account the actual military actions of the Russian aggressor against Ukraine, the chosen topic is well-grounded and completely relevant at this time. The novelty of the conducted search lies in the study of the position of German politicians regarding the supply of weapons to Ukraine. The work uses an anthropocentric approach. On the basis of topos analysis, language argumentative patterns (topoi) that are characteristic of military discourse were determined. We define a topos as an argument, a general statement or a topic, which is derived on the basis of the syntactic constructions «If...» and «Because...». Topoi of argumentation perform the function of legitimizing certain positions and are thought structures of an approach to solving a certain political issue. Typical context-specific topoi are the topos of danger, topos of burden, topos of reality, etc. On the example of the analysis of the pressure topos «Druck-Topos», the reasoned criticism from the opposition and other parliamentarians of the policy of indecision of the German government regarding the supply of weapons to Ukraine is shown. To achieve this goal, politicians use a wide range of stylistic means. The position of certain parliamentarians regarding the supply of weapons to Ukraine is presented, given their party affiliation. The speech of the head of the Conservative Party of Germany (CDU) Friedrich Merz and Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany in 2014–2022 Andrii Melnyk is particularly emotional. The implicit meanings of the text corpus are discovered and the dominant ways of thinking of the members of the Western European political community with regard to the problem of resisting Russian aggression are shown. Topoi, as thought structures, reveal the key meanings of the «Waffenlieferung» concept on the basis of text fragments. In a certain geographical and temporal space, certain argumentative patterns dominate. This thought process is a reflection of the historical past.