If You Want Debates, Let It Be Debates, or Communicative Behavior of Ukrainian Politicians in the Pre-Election Race

We analyzed the features of the communicative behavior of Ukrainian politicians during pre-election presidential debates. Debates are one of the speech genres of political discourse. We traced the dynamics of the genre of pre-election debates in Ukraine from 1994 to 2019 and identified the essential characteristics of the genre of debates of candidates for President of Ukraine. We chose a communicative-discursive approach as the methodological basis of the study. This approach combines discursive, linguopragmatic, contextual and component types of analysis. The material for the analysis was video recordings and transcripts of debates of candidates for President of Ukraine in 2004, 2014 and 2019. The purpose of the study is to characterize the specifics of the communicative behavior of Ukrainian politicians during the debates of candidates for the President of Ukraine. The object of analysis is Ukrainian political discourse, in particular, electoral discourse, which is represented by the genre of pre-election debates of candidates for the President of Ukraine. We have identified and analyzed the main features of the communicative behavior of politicians during the debates of candidates for the President of Ukraine: declarativeness, dialogicity, argumentativeness, theatricality, intellectuality, provocativeness and aggressiveness. We have studied debates as an agonal-argumentative genre of political discourse. This genre has features of interactivity, spontaneity, polylogue and suggestiveness, it is focused on persuading the audience. We have demonstrated that the choice of a candidate’s communicative strategy of behavior can significantly affect public opinion and the outcome of the elections. The prospects of the study are a comprehensive study of the Ukrainian electoral discourse in general and electoral debates in particular.