TYPES OF DEONTIC AGENT IN POLITICAL SPEECH (ON THE MATERIAL OF GERMAN AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES)

This study is dedicated to the problem of semantic and functional variability of deontic constructions. Deontic is an invariant characteristic of any discourse, which, depending on its type, organizes modal structures in different ways. In relation to the actions of an obligatory change in the state of affairs in the world, this modality is expressed by a statement in which there are two plans: informative, (action to perform) and deontic, including information about various factors that require creating a different state of affairs, about the nature of the modal attitude to action (mandatory, prohibited or permitted) and about the performer of the action, i.e. about the modal source, modal force and modal agents.
The functional features of deontic expressions and the various combinations and variations of their components depend on the type of discourse. In this paper the types of modal agents in the nuclear genre of political discourse – political speeches in German and Russian linguistic cultures – are described using contextual analysis. The study shows that the set of deontic agents is predetermined by this discursive practice, its functional and system-forming characteristics, and has a similarity in the implementation of a modal agent regardless of linguoculture. The method of functional-semantic description reveals that various types of deontic agents, their variability and semantic flexibility allow deontic utterances to realize different functions, thus determining the peculiarity of deontic modality in political discourse.