TED-Conferences – the Platform for English Motivational Discourse

Abstract

Recently, TED-conferences have become one of the most popular platforms in the global community for the dissemination of ideas worth sharing. Motivation speeches in English are at the forefront of numerous ones delivered by scientists, doctors, programmers, musicians, and ordinary citizens willing to share an idea worth spreading. The article analyzes the presentations of speakers at TED-conferences to bring their motivational focus. To achieve this goal, the semantics of the concept of motivation is first interpreted, and then, based on randomly selected presentations of several speakers from the TED platform, the semantic content of their text is analyzed. To establish the most frequently used lexical units, the semantic core of each speech is created. Singling out and the analysis of the semantic core of speeches allows us to make sure that the most commonly used lexical units reflect the topic of the speech, the speaker organizes his presentation around a single idea, which is provided for by the requirements of the TED-conferences organizers. It is concluded that motivation as a phenomenon in which the activities of one person (or group of people) are regulated by another, taking into account some need, is a set of purposeful actions associated with the speaker's intention to influence the interlocutor and in a certain way change or maintain the already existing state of affairs. Speeches at TEDconferences are informative, persuasive and motivational in nature. On the one hand, it is important for the speaker to communicate factual material (facts, ideas, and results). However, what is more important for him is to influence the listener, to convince of the acceptability of his idea, to evoke emotional reflection in the audience, to ensure that the speech actualizes the problem, inspires, and motivates to further actions to solve it. Carrying out cognitive and communicative activities via TED talks with the help of strategies of information, persuasion and motivation, speakers influence different areas of consciousness – rational thinking, emotions and expression of will, respectively. As a result, they create a motivational discourse, the subjects of which they themselves are in the role of speakers, and the audience as recipients.