Discursive Strategies in the Personal Discourse of Ksenia Sobchak, Candidate for the Presidency of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The article examines the main strategies of Ksenia Sobchak’s personal discourse and their linguistic implementation. The study is based on the texts from the electoral programme for her presidential candidacy, posted on the official “Civic Initiative” party website, appearances in debates on various Russian TV channels, and posts on social media accounts during the 2018 Russian presidential election campaign. We develop a corpus that presents communicative, pragmatic, gender-based and linguocultural features of the public speeches of an oppositional female politician. Critical discourse analysis and the linguopragmatic method are applied. The linguistic method she uses to create identity is also analysed. The work explores the discursive strategies and techniques, as well as the linguistic and rhetorical resources, used by the candidate to influence the electorate. The analysis proves that Ksenia Sobchak’s discursive activity is based on word play, which is determined by the communicative objective of her electoral campaign.