SPEECH PORTRAIT OF A POLITICAL LEADER (BASED ON THE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF THE RUSSIAN AND US PRESIDENTS)

An inaugural address is part of the political reality of the country, and represents an essential moment in delivering political visions for the future by presidents. The given paper deals with the inauguration speeches of Vladimir Putin (2018) and Donald Trump (2017) and is aimed at analyzing the role of verbal means in forming the speech portraits of An inaugural address is part of the political reality of the country, and represents an essential moment in delivering political visions for the future by presidents. The given paper deals with the inauguration speeches of Vladimir Putin (2018) and Donald Trump (2017) and is aimed at analyzing the role of verbal means in forming the speech portraits of political leaders. By means of comparative content analysis we looked for grammatical, lexical and stylistic elements peculiar to a specific linguistic persona while comparing the speeches of the presidents as well as we attempted to determine the specific national backgrounds of political discourse. We found out that the speech portrait of a country leader is strongly related to his national identity, mentality and socio-political course of the country. Thus, each president’s inauguration context model is mostly characterized by a different set of linguistic means. The paper findings may be useful for researchers who deal with interdisciplinary studies, political and cognitive linguistics, political discourse and communication analysis.