Persuasiveness in Political Discourse on Twitter Персуазивність у жанрі твіттінг в англомовному політичному дискурсі

The article focuses on the question of new communication form appearance – the internet communication, namely political internet communication, that furthermore influenced the appearance of the new genres, among which we can find twitting. The active twitting usage with the communicative aim in political sphere puts the question about language learning namely about the means of expression of the persuasive language influence in the analyzed genre, as the persuasive language influence function is one of the most important functions in political internet-communication from psycholinguistic point of view. 
The research process found out the range of verbal expression meanings of explicit and implicit persuasiveness. To the verbal meanings of implicit persuasiveness, we can refer the usage of imperatives and imperative constructions, explicit performatives, constructions with modal verbs, short sentences, and slogans. 
The verbal meanings of implicit persuasiveness include rhetorical questions, affirmative sentences, and famous people’s citations. To the special language meanings, which encourage the influence on the addressee we also refer the usage of elliptical sentences, parcelation, repetition. The mostly used lexical and stylistic meanings, that encourage the fulfillment of the main purposes of political discourse is the usage of metaphor, metonymy, irony, personification and oxymoron. The research allowed us to come to conclusion, that the English-speaking political internet-communication is characterized with the usage of the same verbal appellation meanings as traditional communication. But we can also outline the meanings peculiar only to the internet communication and especially the twitting genre. For the research methodology we took out modern scientific conceptions. The research methodology was developed according the framework of genre study, psycholinguistics, 2.0, virtual genre study. According to the aim and tasks, general and linguistic research methods were used.


Introduction
The study further presented in this article is embedded into the notion of computer-mediated communication, a term that became widely known in linguistics (Herring & Androutsopoulos, 2015;Thurlow et al., 2004), after it appeared in the title of an infl uential online publication, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Crystal, 2011: 1) and in the work of Nancy Baron (Baron, 1984).According to © Olena Goroshko, Tetiana Poliakova Kompantseva (2008), computer-mediated communication is defi ned as a special form of communication, interaction of people with each other on the Internet, carried out by means of exchanging text and multimedia messages.There are a number of seminal studies that address the issue of computer-mediated communication (Akimova, 2012;Baron, 2003;2008;Barkovitch, 2015;Herring, 2014) by means of elucidating such topics as vocabulary use, oral-written format of speech, genre, genre aspects, word-building, (Crystal, 2011;Herring, 1996;2008).
In order to provide insight into the new trends in Internet linguistics, including psycholinguistic research as one of its subject areas, and under impact of the rapid development of Internet technology especially web 2.0 platforms (Herring, 2013), the term linguistics 2.0 is coined to delineate all these innovative processes taking place in the communicative space.In 2012 the umbrella term keyboard (voice) -to -screen (voice) communication appeared to cover those types of communication that may be depicted through a number of specifi c dichotomies: asynchronous -synchronous; written -spoken; monologue -dialogic; text -utterance; private -public; mobilestationary, monomodal -multimodal and voice -keyboard (screen) (realized through Telegram or WhatsUp messengers or Twitter or Facebook SNS (Goroshko, 2017).The terms psycholinguistics 2.0 or even psycholinguistics 3.0 are also suggested to specify a separate fi eld of linguistics analysis covering psycholinguistic research directly impacted by web 2.0 or web 3.0 technologies, e.g. the use of web 2.0 technologies in language acquisition studies, or impact of political leaders' speech on the citizenry, etc. (Goroshko, 2009).Thus, enlightening the new trends in Internet linguistics associated with the rapid development of Internet technology for the formalization of these innovative processes one can recommend to use an umbrella term keyboard (voice) -to -screen (voice) communication, covering all these types of communication through the Net.
Research in online communication typically involves text comments on photo-sharing sites; text, audio, and video responses to YouTube videos; text (and voice) chat during multiplayer online games; and text, video and audio messages from mobile phones posted to interactive TV programs, through messengers as Telegram or Viber, etc.These types of communication are characterised by convergence processes that involve the convergence of text with text, text with multimodality (video or audio), comments on news stories; 'talk' pages associated with Wikipedia articles; status updates and comments convergence of different layers in texts, time overlaps, the senders and receivers of the messages we can trace the trend of increasing convergence, provoked even a specially developed research methodology (Snelson, 2016).
In order to describe the psycholinguistic component in online communication realized with the help of web 2.0 platforms and gadgets we propose to use the term psycholinguistics 2.0 that emphasizes the psycholinguistic research component in this process.This term should be regarded in conjunction with a new approach in linguistics called Internet linguistics, a new area of linguistics with its own proper methodology and research objects (Goroshko, 2009).Consequently, the Internet and social media (web 2.0 platforms) have given rise to a broad range of new communicative genres that are referred to under the term genre 2.0.One can mention such genres as chats, forums, text messaging (SMS, WhatsApp), interaction on wiki talk pages and in blog comments, via Twitter, on social network sites, e.g.Facebook or Pinterest, and in multimodal 3D environments.

Theoretical background
Humanity has ample access to the opportunities offered by Internet-technologies (Herring, 2015) and it is only natural that political leaders use tremendous advantages associated with the development of information technologies and, in particular, social media resources.Being actively introduced into the sphere of politics, information technologies have signifi cantly changed people`s views and stereotypes about the processes of interaction between political leaders and society.Special terms, such as network politics, political Internet, cyberpolitics, digital democracy, politics 2.0, communication democracy, cyber democracy, e-government, computer-mediated political communication (Morozova, 2011: 156;Goroshko & Chevordov, 2017) appeared to identify a new reality, new ways of the development of society and states.The presence of political discourse on the Internet has facilitated the emergence of political linguistics.It is a research area that deals with political communication, i.e. verbal activity which is focused on the propaganda of certain ideas with an emotional impact on the citizenry.This social science appears at the crossroad of linguistics and political studies.Scholarship in this fi eld is united, fi rst of all, by the material under examination, namely the political language, texts, and discourse (Chudinov, 2012: 6).
It is an area where political linguistics is closely connected with psycholinguistics, which examines the relationship between language, thinking, and consciousness.The relationship of these two fi elds is stipulated by the fact that one of the directions of psycholinguistics study is the analysis of speech activity functions.In the political sphere of communication we can distinguish informative, suggestive, expressive, persuasive, and culture forming functions.The focus of attention of psycholinguistics is on the analysis of the relationship between messages, author`s intentions, their transformation into verbal texts and their subsequent interpretation by the addressee.Perception of speech implies extracting the meaning that lies behind the external form of the statement.In the political sphere this process gains even more importance, since one of the main tasks of political leader is to bring his/her idea, and intention to the addressee using both explicit means and implicit ones, to encourage the addressee to perform a certain action.
The transition of political communication from the traditional to the virtual sphere facilitated the emergence of political Internet-linguistics. Its main objective is to study political texts and the peculiarities of the language functioning in the political sphere on the Net.The emergence of Internet-communication, including political Internet-communication, initiates new genres actively used on the Net, one of which is twitting, a digital genre initiated by the Internet-service Twitter.Twitter is a social network, an online service for micro-blogging, allowing users to send short (up to 280 characters) text messages.
Today, it is common for political leaders, government offi cials, political parties (i.e., all political stakeholders) to use Twitter in order to convey their offi cial positions to the world community.One of the fi rst leaders who started using Twitter in 2007 was the 44th US President Barack Obama.Currently, the most popular political leaders (by the number of followers) who have their accounts on Twitter are Donald Trump, the 45th US President (about 53 million); Narendra Modi, Indian Prime Minister (about 43 million); Barack Obama, the 44th US President (more than 100 million), and other political actors.
Being a powerful interactive means of communication with the society, the Internet makes it possible for politicians to carry on a steady dialogue with their Internet-users, express their opinion on various political issues, and realize their personal ambitions and qualities in the fi eld of politics.It allows strengthening and promoting their own image and glory (Page, 2012).The implementation of this communication is facilitated by the use of the following Twitter functions: the use of @ in front of the name indicates that this tweet is intended for a particular user; letters RT denote the quotation of another user; the sign of hashtag (#) denotes a thematic word.All functions mentioned above can be used in the genre -twitting -in order to promote your image, to show, for example, your connection with other users or your importance (by the number of retweets).
An active use of the Internet for communication in the political sphere raises the question of studying the means of expressing persuasiveness in the genre under investigation since one of the most essential areas of psycholinguistics (as one of the fi elds of linguistics, political linguistics) is the analysis of language as the main means of conducting speech activity, the main means of communication.However, psycholinguistics is interested not only in the study of linguistic means, e.g.grammatical, lexical, morphological, syntactic, but in the processes of speech activity in the system of various types of human activity, in this case, in the sphere of political discourse.
The study of political Internet discourse attracted researchers in political sciences, sociology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics (Bronnikov, 2011;Chudinov, 2012;Conover et al., 2011;Haynes, 2009).The attention of linguists usually concentrates on the traditional political communication (Vashyuk, 2014;Petlyuchenko, 2009;Popova, 2014).As far as political Internet discourse is concerned (Morozova, 2011;Himelboim et al., 2013;Lehti & Laippala, 2014), and namely the study of the linguistic peculiarities of the genre twitting in the fi eld of political Internet-communication, there are not many works on this topic today.
The research purpose of the study further presented in the article is to analyze the ways of expressing persuasiveness in the genre of twitting in the English-speaking political discourse on the Net.The research objectives are to determine and analyze the main explicit and implicit means of expressing persuasiveness in the genre twitting.The research material includes 915 messages obtained from offi cial home pages of fi ve most popular (according to the number of followers) politicians on Twitter -Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Shashi Tharoor, Cory Booker, and Paul Ryan.The messages are collected during the period from June 1 to June 30 2018.
To meet our objectives the method of information analysis, the synthesis method, the comparative method, the method of linguistic description, semantic and syntactic methods, interpretation method, the mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative analyses are used.

Results and discussion
The organization of the text in the area of politics depends, fi rst of all, on the target audience -the addressees, who are presented by like-minded people of the politician, their opponents and potential electors (Chudinov, 2012).In addition, an important role is attributed to the purpose of using the Internet in the politics.Similar to traditional mass media, it is the dissemination of information from the author to addressees.However, in contrast to traditional communication, where this process is basically unidirectional, in Internet-communication, thanks to the use of modern technologies and, in particular, the original functions of the genre twitting -the use of thematic words, retweets, the ability to address a tweet both to a particular user, and to all users signed to receive messages from this author, it becomes a dialogue -an interaction that strengthens the trust and mutual understanding among communicants.Being closely connected with the issues of ideology (problems of covering political, economic, cultural life, international relations, etc.), communication on the Internet is also aimed at explaining and evaluating information and political situations.
However, one of the most important functions of political Internet discourse is the function of the linguistic persuasion (it is also called motivation, vocative, conative, regulative (Chudinov, 2012), appellative function (Chudinov, 2012;Petlyuchenko, 2009) as the Internet is considered to be an important and effective tool to construct opinions and worldviews, i.e. it presents a powerful tool to impact the audience (Morozova, 2011: 156-157), a tool of persuasion, reasoning and propaganda, which is used to meet individual objectives.
Persuasiveness in political discourse on Twitter implies an impact on the addressee for the purpose of mobilizing them to perform certain actions.Citizenry is urged to transfer the power to a particular party, to give support to this party, to act in accordance with the decisions taken by this party (Chudinov, 2012: 84).Persuasiveness in political discourse on Twitter is aimed at addressing the users to come to the elections, to vote for a particular political party and a politician, to take part in meetings, etc. Persuasiveness is realized with the help of various linguistic means.
Research has distinguished between two types of means, for instance an explicit appeal to commit an action.It is such a type of an appellative statement that is associated with the change in behavior or the way of thinking.The second one is an implicit type of an appellative statement associated with a hidden message (Petlyuchenko, 2009: 203).Verbal means of explicit persuasiveness include imperatives, illustrated by the following tweet: (1) Narendra Modi @narendramodi Jun 26 The interaction with benefi ciaries of the Government's social security schemes commences at 9:30 AM.Do join via the 'Narendra Modi Mobile App' or watch it on @DDNewsLive.The stories of the benefi ciaries will surely motivate us all.This message is an example of the use of the imperative mood directed at the addressee and aimed to induce him to perform the action you need.As the study showed, imperatives (82 cases) are the most frequent form of verbal means of explicit persuasiveness and are found in about 9% of the tweets under investigation.Imperative constructions which include the use of such constructions as it is time for smb to do smth, to let smb do smth, etc.: (2) Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Jun 26 Thank you South Carolina.Now let's get out tomorrow and VOTE for @HenryMcMaster!This tweet presents an example of the use of the imperative construction, the percentage of which in the tweets of the political sphere is about 2% (19 cases).The widespread use of imperatives and imperative constructions as special means of appeal is caused by the author`s orientation both on the appellative and contact form of the statement (Petlyuchenko, 2009: 211).
Explicit performatives include the verbs to appeal, to ask, to request, to order, to urge, to demand, to want, to wish, to entrust, to advise, to recommend: (3) Narendra Modi @narendramodi Jun 20 I urge people around to world to embrace Yoga.I also request people to share the joys of Yoga with others by teaching Yoga particularly to today's youth.This way we can create a healthier planet.
In this message, performative explication is realized by using the verbs urge and request.According to the analysis, the use of explicit performatives was found in about 1.7% of the tweets of the political sphere.
Constructions with modal verbs (must, should, to have to, need, can, could), which are the most effective way of appealing to the addressee associated with the recommendation to perform the action: (4) Shashi Tharoor‫‬ @ShashiTharoor Jun 18 Interesting analysis by AmnaMirza on the lateral entry issue.My view is that there should be clear criteria for which posts are thrown open for lateral entrants who have expertise unavailable in government.&objective evaluation standards for applicants.
The use of the modal verb in this example indicates the wishes of the politician, his intentions, and is also characterized by the imperative nature and increased ideological value in the sphere of political communication.
The afore-mentioned tweets are characterized by the prevalence of the use of the modal verb must (40% of all modal verbs aimed at inducing the addressee to perform an action).The second place among modal verbs as for the frequency of their use is taken by the verb should (about 35%), followed by the verbs need (9%), to have to (9%), can, could (7.7%), supporting the main objective of the statement and expressing the desire or need to perform an action (Didenko, 2001: 94-95).
In general, modal verbs are found in about 8.5% of the tweets under investigation.This percentage indicates a fairly high level of their use and is explained by the need to implement an incentive to perform an action.
Another linguistic means of persuasiveness in political discourse on Twitter is represented by short sentences and slogans: (5) Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Jun 4 Farmers have not been doing well for 15 years.Mexico, Canada, China and others have treated them unfairly.By the time I fi nish trade talks, that will change.Big trade barriers against U.S. farmers, and other businesses, will fi nally be broken.Massive trade defi cits no longer!These verbal means of explicit persuasiveness are used in 3% of the messages of political discourse on Twitter, which generally indicates quite a high level of their use due to the ability to attract users' attention to this part of the message and thus focus on a particular problem.
(6) Narendra Modi @narendramodi Jun 30 GST has brought growth, simplicity and transparency.It is: Boosting formalisation.Enhancing productivity.Furthering 'Ease of Doing Business.'Benefi tting small and medium enterprises.#GSTForNewIndia This tweet is an example of an affi rmative sentence -the statement of the political leader, their judgment, attitude to a particular issue and the purpose of which is to try to convince users of his point of view.Affi rmative sentences are one of the most widespread verbal means of implicit persuasion in political online and offl ine communication.They occur in 17% of the messages studied and head the list in the frequency of use among verbal means of implicit persuasiveness.
Interrogative sentences, mainly rhetorical questions, help to draw attention to a certain problem, to show the solidarity of the political leader with his voters, to pay attention to his candidature, etc.: (7) Shashi Tharoor @ShashiTharoor Jun 26 Sorry to hear that the Indian Govt has not raised the student visa issue w/ the British: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/nobodyfrom-govt-has-raised-student-visa-row-with-us-british-envoy-dominicasquith-5232053/…Chinese applicants get more student visas, more cheaply & for longer duration, on less onerous terms, than Indian students do.Does our Govt have no self-respect?
The use of rhetorical questions is an important means of dialogization consolidating the space between the author and other users.One of its functions is to attract attention, to deepen the impression, to increase the emotional tone (Arnold, 1990: 167).The answer to the rhetorical question has already been prompted by the authors.They intend only to induce the addressee to perform an action, to make him an active participant of communication.As the study has shown, rhetorical question are found in about 32 messages, or 3.5% of all tweets in this study.
Future tenses is the second most frequently used tool of verbal means of implicit persuasiveness (about 5.7% of messages).Using future tense forms, the author tries to make predictions concerning different situations in the future, expresses his ideas about future events.Thus, comparing past situations, past experience with possible future events is a powerful method of argumentation to meet communicative objectives, for instance (8) Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Jun 30 I will be making my choice for Justice of the United States Supreme Court on the fi rst Monday after the July 4th Holiday, July 9th!Another means of persuasiveness is to quote the sayings of famous writers, politicians, journalists, etc.: (9) Cory Booker @CoryBooker Jun 29 «Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.»James Baldwin #FaceIt #FightIt #YouFindHopeThroughStruggle In ( 9), the author uses the statement by James Baldwin, a famous American writer and playwright of the 20 th century.It introduces new meanings, new events into historical and cultural context (Valgina, 2003: 150).Being an important functional element of verbal persuasiveness, citations help to increase the verbal representativeness of the text, the expressiveness of messages.This means of implicit persuasiveness is found only in about 1.2% of tweets.It can be explained by the restriction of messages in the genre twitting up to 280 characters, and also depends on the linguistic identity of the politician, i.e. it is of individual nature and is a feature of the author's writing style.Thus, 91% of all citations that occur in the messages examined are found in the tweets by D. Trump.
Special linguistic means, which strengthen the impact on the addressee, also include (Chudinov, 2012: 106) elliptical sentences, representing the omission of the main members of the sentence, e.g.
(10) Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Jun 25 Just landed in South Carolina -will be at the McMaster rally shortly!#MAGA Elliptical sentences rank quite high among verbal means of expressing persuasiveness and are found on average in 28% of tweets investigated.It is explained by the fact that in the genre under study, as in many other digital genres characterized by a synchronous nature of communication, elliptical sentences create an imitation of a lively, informal conversation, give it the infl ection of emotionality, thus bringing the author and the recipient closer, which is extremely important in the fi eld of political communication when achieving the goals set.
Parceling presents an important stylistic technique of syntax that allows attracting users' attention and conveying them your point of view.However, in the genre twitting in the fi eld of political communication, there are only a few cases of using this means -in about 0.5% of messages, e.g.
(11) Narendra Modi @narendramodi Jun 26 India is among the most investor friendly global economies.Our country offers: Growth.Macro-economic stability.Supportive regulatory framework.Political stability.A talented workforce.Large markets.

Good physical infrastructure. Come, invest in India!
Repetition is found quite rarely -in 0.8% of tweets, repetition is an expressive means of syntax aimed at attracting the addressee`s attention and emphasizing the emotional and semantic tone of the statement: (12) Cory BookerVerifi ed account @CoryBooker Jun 22 Love over hate Love over indifference Love over ignorance Love over ego Love over fear Love over barriers Love over borders Love over And over And over Again In the present corpus, there are other lexical stylistic means that contribute to the impact on the audience, its opinions, the implementation of the strategies of positive self-presentation and negative representation of the opponent, etc. -are revealed.One of those means is metaphor and metonymy, e.g.
(13) Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Jun 7 Prime Minister Trudeau is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things...but he doesn't bring up the fact that they charge us up to 300% on dairy -hurting our Farmers, killing our Agriculture!( 14) Narendra Modi @narendramodi Jun 24 A test match in Bengaluru drew the attention of the entire cricketing world.The match between India and Afghanistan scripted history and marked a win for sportsmanship.#MannKiBaat The data analysis indicates that irony is present in political discourse on Twitter, e.g.© Olena Goroshko, Tetiana Poliakova (15) Shashi Tharoor @ShashiTharoor Jun 30 Wonderful discussion on The Role of Empire in WW1 at the #BradfordLiteraryFestival today with @RemonaAly, LucFerrier, PatCumper & @AmanMadra Britain is waking up to how much the soldiers of the non-white colonies did for her in two World Wars.Better late than never.
As the analysis shows, the use of lexical stylistic means cannot be assigned to the most common means of expressing persuasiveness in political discourse on Twitter.Thus, these means are found in 10.2% of the messages under study.The use of metaphor and metonymy is found in 82% of the tweets, and irony in 18%.It is explained by the fact that the main function of the genre studied is informing users about plans, meetings, various events and the use of linguistic means (the above mentioned lexical stylistic means) that enhance expressiveness of statements is not always justifi ed in view of the sphere of the genre under study.A low frequency of metaphor, metonymy, irony and other tropes is also explained by the limitation of the size of the message in the genre twitting up to 280 characters.

Сoncluded
It can be concluded that political discourse on Twitter is characterised by a fi xed number of verbal means of explicit and implicit persuasiveness.The use of linguistic means is manifested at all linguistic levels, lexical, morphemic, and syntactic.In general, these means are found in 90.5% of the tweets, which indicates a high frequency of their use in the genre twitting in this area.The fi rst three places as for the frequency of use are taken by elliptical sentences (28% of messages), followed by affi rmative sentences (16.4% of messages) and imperatives (9% of messages).
It can be argued that political Internet discourse is characterized by the use of the same verbal means as in traditional communication.However, it is also possible to single out the means that can be found exclusively in Internet discourse, and namely, in twitting, and the use of which became possible only due to unlimited possibilities of information technologies.These are the use of thematic words that allow getting to the timeline where this particular topic is discussed; the use of letters RT, the sign @, the ability to use links to audio and video materials and many others.Ключевые слова: общения от клавиатуры и голоса (звука) -к экрану и голосу (звуку), психолингвистика 2.0, политическая интернеткоммуникация, интернет-жанр, твиттинг, персуазивность.