INTERPRETATION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANTHROPONYMS IMPLICIT SEMANTICS

Abstract

The article studies the implicit aspect of political discourse through the analysis of semantic implicatures of anthroponyms. The latter ones include formal (names, surnames) and informal (nicknames, aliases, pseudonyms) nominative units of famous politicians, heads of state and governments which respectively fall into categories of primary and secondary nomination. This fact determines different approaches to their study and ways of interpreting semantic implicatures they reproduce. It has been determined that the etymological and semasiological approaches are considered  the most effective in the research of political leaders’ formal names. They make it possible to trace the origin of a particular anthroponym and to identify implicit semantic elements by analyzing the meaning of their derivative components. The semantic meaning of such onomastic units is specific: it does not reflect concepts, but just indicates the original semantics – the motives of   nomination. Such semantic implicatures, as a rule, are irrelevant to the nominee’s personality, individually unmotivated and frequently contain neutral extralingual information. At the same time, they are constituent elements of anthroponym’s integral semantic meaning.

The pragmatic approach has proved efficient in dealing with informal anthroponyms in political discourse as it is extralingual factors that pragmatically and functionally prompt the formation of nicknames and other informal nominative units. The research demonstrates that the semantic implicatures of such informal names contain both positive and negative connotations and in an exaggerated form indicate the characteristics of a nominee, distinguish him from others, convey information about the peculiarities and highlights of his political career.