Лингвистический портрет президента. Сравнение лингвистических портретов президентов В.В.Путина и Б.Обамы

Dear members of the Commission, students and guests.

I’m a student of the tenth first class Kondratieva Anastasia.

The theme of our project is the linguistic portrait of the personality of the president. The comparison of the linguistic portraits of the Russian and the US presidents.

Working on the project we want to compare the linguistic portraits of two presidents.

The tasks we set:

•  to explore the concept of "linguistic identity".
•  to consider the language portrait of personality of Russian President Vladimir Putin
•  to consider the language portrait of personality of U.S. President B.H.Obama
•  to compare the language portraits of these two presidents
•  to study the literature on this topic
•  to learn the corresponding methods

To fulfil these tasks, I have

• studied the media on this topic
• summarized all the information connected with the problem
• compared linguistic portraits of the Russian and the US presidents  and made up a comparative table
• analyzed and compared the data found while working on the project to the existing one
• studied the suitable  literature

First of all, It should be mentioned that many scientists been dealing with the concept of the linguistic portrait of a personality. They are Bogin, Karaulov, Osetrova and others.

 To understand this concept correctly we take the definition given by Elena Osetrova.

She identifies speech and language features. To them it relates vocabulary, proper social status of the speaker, phrase construction, various means of expression: metaphors, similes, often in a domestic character, lexical repetition.

And besides, to compare the language portraits of the presidents of Russia and the U.S. we took the model given by E.V. Osetrova. She thinks that on the basis of 4 criteria (keywords, slogans, the role and communicative success. We can analise the linguistic portrait of a person according to 3 characteristics (media, society, opposition)

We analyzed several speeches given by Vladimir Putin and B.H.Obama in accordance with these 3 characteristics.

I would like you to have a look at our comparative table, but as it’s very huge, we present you only a part of it. The whole table is in Appendix 3.

According to the table, we have come to the following conclusions:

• Through linguistic features Putin reveals himself as an open, well-educated person, having a heightened sense of self-esteem, which manifests itself both in the personal and civil terms. Moreover, he is able to create a necessary psychological atmosphere of the conversation. He is a leader and this fact also affects the language portrait. He is a speaker who is able to prevent ambiguity of his statements, to focus attention on critical information, in spite of official writing style.

• Barack Obama appears to us as an experienced speaker, knowledgeable and able to use the power of words. His speech is emotional, but at the same time is very correct and concise. He sounds confident. He does not look at the paper; he never loses the main idea of his speech. All of Obama's speech is built on common phrases and charisma. However, despite this we were able to observe individual features in his speech; these features characterize him as a conservative person, a personality, who believes in God. And he is an avid supporter of democracy and the fight against racial discrimination. Barack Obama is the President, who is confident in the forces of his country and the people. He is the president focused on success.

In the course of this work, We came to several conclusions:

• Firstly, various oratorical methods of political speech make the linguistic portraits of V.V. Putin and B.H.Obama unique.
• Secondly, when comparing the linguistic portraits of V.V Putin and B.H.Obama it is obvious that there are more similarities than differences. The differences between the language portraits of these presidents are justified by the differences between the languages. As for the similarities; they are explained by similar communicative goals, and of course, also by almost the same level of oratory and political experience.

On the basis of theoretical material in this work it is quite possible to compare language portraits of other personalities.

And now I suggest you to watch and listen to very short extracts from these presidents’ speeches.

Thank you for your attention.

I am ready to answer your questions.