On Considering the Term ‘Discrediteme' as a Unit for Analyzing Communicative Strategy of Discrediting
The article overviews linguistics of political discourse as a separate branch of linguistics, considering both Russian and foreign discourse analysis schools. Political linguistics is seen as presumably the main framework to analyse political discourse from linguistic point of view. While many works seemingly lack the very notion of the linguistic unit that performs the discrediting, it is necessary to clearly realize what is being analyzed, or what one should look for, when analyzing the communicative strategy of discrediting. Herewith, the author suggests introducing the term ‘discrediteme' to denote a linguistic unit that realizes the strategy of discrediting in political discourse. Linguistically, its length can vary from a single word or a couple of words to a whole sentence. Obviously, being constituents realizing a communicative strategy, discreditemes do not act isolatedly but within a communicative model. Therefore, it seems necessary to consider not only discreditemes as linguistic units but also the models that they are actualized in. This article also includes a model that may fit most communicative situations in political discourse where discrediting occurs.