The Cognitive-Pragmatic Category of Relevance in the Structure of Parliamentary and Political Communication
The article deals with the cognitive-communicative aspects of political, and specifically parliamentary communication (parliamentary discourse differs from other kinds of political communication by topical relevance, public nature and institutional regulation of polemics, carefulness of argumentation, a certain culture of reasoning, discursive coherence (precedence), protocol intertextuality, and the search for consensus necessary for making a decision or adopting a law). Based on the cognitive methodological procedures, the author suggests a structural model of the cognitive space of parliamentary discourse demonstrating the interaction between hierarchically organized propositions. The author poses a hypothesis about the priority of the principle of relevance in the cognitive structure of political communication. The aim of the study is to describe the mechanism of decision making as the main functional characteristic of parliamentary communication. The role of consensus and the necessity of a constructive deliberative component in the process of interaction between a political group and the society at large is specially stressed. The author singles out differential features of political persuasiveness and reveals the mechanism of interaction between the inner and outer contexts in the process of institutional verbal communication. The material of the study includes the political discursive formation of modern France. The article analyzes the degree of relevance of the political elite discourse in the public consciousness of the civil society on the example of the political crisis culminating in the yellow vests movement. The analysis leads the author to the conclusion about the necessity of further study of the structure and functions of political relevance as a conclusive mechanism and means of reaching a consensus in deliberative political communication.