Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/suvlin.2021.092.08
Interruption as a reflection of speaker’s identity in the 2020 US presidential debates
Alexey A. Timbay
orcid.org/0000-0003-2061-0263
; Faculty of Science, Humanities and Education, Technical University of Liberec
Abstract
The article establishes the role of interruption as a key communicative strategy which defined the
character of the 2020 US presidential debates. It is posited that the participants of the debates,
namely Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, realized how effective certain types of linguistic behavior
could be and deliberately used specifi c communicative tactics to achieve better results and win the
voters’ support. Some of the strategies that the participants resorted to were merely situational;
however, most of the strategies identifi ed in the research had a recurrent nature representing the
debating styles of the politicians. It is also assumed in the study that repeated breaches of a normal
turn–taking process such as systemic interruptions have the potential to modify the public perception of the politician’s communicative styles, which are seen in the paper as inherent components
of the politicians’ identities.
Keywords
speaker identity; presidential debates; interruptions as strategy; USA; 2020
Hrčak ID:
269783
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2021.
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