Mitigative tactics in digital diplomatic discourse (based on the speeches of S. Lavrov and B. Johnson)

Abstract

© 2020 ACM. The article discusses tactics that implement communicative mitigation in digital diplomatic discourse. The active development of digital communication formats could not but affect institutional discursive practices, including diplomatic discourse. This is confirmed not only by the official websites of diplomatic services, but also by personal and institutional accounts of politicians and diplomats on social networks, which, in turn, led to the emergence of terms such as digital diplomacy and twi(t)plomacy. Based on the main characteristics of diplomatic discourse, such as semantic diffused, tolerance, evasiveness in statements, focus on the non-conflict course of communicative contact, the article concludes that the communicative mitigation is relevant for this type of discourse. As an analysis of the websites of the diplomatic departments of Russia and the UK showed, communicative mitigation plays an important role in digital diplomatic communication. As a result of the analysis of the speeches of S. Lavrov and B. Johnson, it was found that the most actively mitigative strategies and tactics are used to mitigate appraisal illocution. The institutional nature of diplomatic communication, which is characterized by a high level of stereotypical and ritualistic diplomatic language, is also determined by the fact that mitigative tactics are characterized by a fairly high cliché in both languages, Russian and English.