WE TRIED OUR BEST, YOU KNOW THE REST: DESTRUCTIVE VERBAL BEHAVIOR OF POLITICAL FIGURES AS A FACTOR OF DISCREDITING THE GOVERNMENT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of destructive communicative behavior of Russian political figures, which has acquired a national scale in the last few years, as one of the factors of discrediting the government. In the context of total digitalization of the Russian public space, the communicative failures of certain officials instantly become public and undermine the trust of the country's citizens in the state power, contributing to the development of protest thinking. It seems that in order to solve this problem, it is necessary to analyze the main causes of conflict-prone communication behavior of politicians and consider possible ways to prevent communication failures. The analysis considered high-profile statements of political figures that caused negative responses in the Russian public space for the period from 2015 to 2019. The analysis shows that the greatest potential for conflict arises when political figures address socially significant topics. In the course of public speeches and statements on social media pages that affect social issues, politicians need to exercise the greatest caution and responsibility in choosing the means of speech to implement their communicative intentions. A high risk of communicative failure occurs when replacing the form of the answer to a direct question with the form of advice, as well as when referring to figurative comparisons. Manifestations of open speech aggression in public professional communication inevitably lead to a situation of communicative failure. All these forms of communication with a high degree of probability cause the effect of discrediting the government. In this regard, politicians, and especially civil servants, should avoid such forms of destructive communicative behavior in the performance of their professional duties.