S.A. Osokina

Altai State University

Stereotype Collocations as the Basis of Rhetorical Competence in Political Sphere

We consider rhetorical competence as a variation of the communicative competence, the concept, suggested by D. Hymes and developed by many American and European linguists.

The communicative competence is the ability to use the language in different situations of human communication. It has verbal and nonverbal components because to achieve the purpose of communication one has to use language skills as well as gestures and mimicry.

The rhetorical competence is the ability to use the language in a particular kind of communicative situations – public speeches. These can be frequently observed in the sphere of politics.

To study this kind of competence we must pay much attention to the orator, the public speaker. One has to exercise eloquence with the help of some methods, the main aim of which is to persuade the audience.

Thus, the essence of the rhetorical competence is to use special verbal and nonverbal means to convince the audience in what one has to say.

Since the research into gestures, mimicry and other forms of nonverbal behavior belongs to the sphere of psychology, this article is devoted to the study of the verbal part of the rhetorical competence.

Linguists suggest a number of language methods to urge the public. These include the usage of emotional words and expressions (from lofty phrases to substandard vocabulary), special imperative structures (the order, the request, the wish, the advice), and repetitions (repeats of words and sentence structures). This number is rather short but behind it one may see the whole language – it is not clear which exactly words one has to use to persuade people.

It is really hard to find any particular language schemes which provide urging effect on the public. Still, these schemes do exist in the language; we call them language pressure. The fact is that the methods listed above are only few things that the orator does to make a speech. They produce some effect but they do not do the most work to make people believe in what is being said. Besides them the orator uses the same language methods of persuading as all other people in their every day life. It is the language pressure that surrounds us and that we are so accustomed to that we cannot imagine how can it be without language around. We trust the words we hear every day because we are used to listening to them and to believing that this is the only way the language can exist.

The language pressure consists of stereotype collocations that press on our ears (and heads!) when we listen to the radio, watch TV, go shopping, talk with a neighbour, etc. These are the expressions like good evening, ladies and gentlemen, how are you, a great idea, tremendous amount, a little knowledge, to realize one’s dream, to explore space, federal funds, economic crisis, make your choice, to improve conditions, peace solution, in contrast, to accomplish one’s task, everlasting love, leave me alone, etc. We gave the examples of language usage in different spheres but there is no doubt one can come across them almost every day. Such stereotype collocations form the main mass of what is said and heard. They are unnoticeable and nobody will say they influence people. They do.

The stereotype is one of the major psychological notions. Stereotypes form gestalts, or perceptual patterns possessing qualities as a whole that can not be described merely as a sum of their parts. Being involved in a pattern, people act the way the pattern makes them, thus, their behavior is predicted and can be controlled.

We suggest that the main work of persuading the public is done by the collocations; metaphors and eloquent gestures are only additional methods. The public trusts collocations it is accustomed to without noticing it. Rhetorical structures attract attention because they are different from stereotype collocations used as a kind of language backup, but without this backup they do not play any significant role.

In political sphere the repertoire of stereotype collocations is rather limited. We analyzed public speeches of such Russian political leaders as D. Medvedev, V. Putin, G. Zuganov and V. Zhirinovskiy and found out that the most frequently used collocations are with the words task (an urgent task, to set a task, an assigned task, to accomplish the task), problem (to solve a problem, an acute problem, the major problem, the pressing problem, an ill-conditioned problem, a tough problem, to pose a problem, to raise a problem, no problem), development (further development, the development of industry, economic development, lines of development, the course of development, the development of the country), question (a loaded question, a sharp question, a particular question, a crucial question, the main question), position (the position of the country, the position of the Government, to change one’s position), as well as the words situation, sphere and relationships in collocations with the adjectives economic, political and international.

As we see, we can distinguish a number of sets of collocations formed by the words task, problem, development, question, position, etc. The usage of these words is obligatory in politics because this is the sphere of tasks and problems. Thus, the rhetorical competence in political sphere, as we see it, is trained by using these expressions. Being common to the ear of Russian people, these collocations make people believe they understand what the politicians are speaking about, though they may not care much about politics in general. At the same time these collocations allow politicians to control public opinion, speaking to the public with the words it is intended to here. Failure to use these collocations makes people think the political leader is speaking nonsense. It is not surprising then that V. Zhirinovskiy takes the fourth position in popularity rating among the mentioned political leaders. In his speeches we can find only a few of the listed collocations, though they are rich in emotional words (especially substandard ones) and imperative structures.

To conclude, we may say that the rhetorical competence in political sphere mainly suggests the ability to use special for this sphere stereotype collocations and to use rhetorical methods of persuading as additional ones.