Пропагандата: опорни точки, стилистики и публики
The Bulgarian Anti-Democratic Propaganda: Talking Points, Styles and Audiences

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a part of the research endeavour in the framework of the project Anti-Liberal Discourses and Propaganda Messages in Bulgarian Media:Dissemination and Social Perception in the period between 2013 and 2016. It is a case study stressing on differences of styles and public discourses with referenceto their audiences in the advancing process of disseminating three major talking points of up-to-date anti-democratic propaganda: 1. ‘Bulgaria’s venalelites’; 2. ‘The decline of the West/Europe’; and 3. ‘The rise of Russia’.The case study focuses of two types of public propaganda speakers – ‘people’s tribunes’ (Alexander Simov, Kevork Kevorkyan), and “thinkers’ targeting a more sophisticated and almost academic audience (dr. Nikolay Mihaylov, prof.Ivo Hristov). The analysis frames their political viewpoints – Simov’s stalinist attitude with discursive formulae coming from the 1950s; Kevorkyan’s thoroughly xenophobic and nationalistic attitude; Mihaylov and Hristov claiming the “artificial” character of the Modern Epoch and liberalism contrary to the “natural” character of the Russian authoritarianism. The paper also pays attention to the different rhetorical devices of propaganda style: the special use of the catachresisas a total trope of the discourse which gathers up all possible talking and focal points, and plots, and themes into one and the same political message, which rhetorical and topical ingredients seem to collapse into a consequent synonymy (Alexander Simov); the use of “manifest” or “slogan-like” short paragraphs andmeaningful artificial capital letters of nouns and verbs in Kevork Kevorkyan’s sentences; the special use of prestigious quotes (most often mistaken and mistreated) in dr. Nikolay Mihaylov’s, and prof. Ivo Hristov’s discourses, etc.

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