KONVERSACIONALIZACIJOS APRAIŠKOS LIETUVOS VIEŠAJAME DISKURSE: POLITIKO ARŪNO VALINSKO ATVEJIS
EXPRESSIONS OF CONVERSATIONALIZATION IN LITHUANIAN PUBLIC DISCOURSE: THE CASE OF THE POLITICIAN ARŪNAS VALINSKAS

Summary/Abstract: One of the changing expressions of public discourse – conversationalization – is when a private conversation typical of an informal environment becomes more and more accepted when communicating in the public space, which is characterized by the use of an informal vocabulary and phraseology, syntaxical spoken language structures, retellings, and the like. In this article we will discuss a famous Lithuanian political figure of the last decade, Arūnas Valinskas. His case is special because the beginning of Valinskas’s political career was associated with the emergence of informal communication marked by entertainment media stylistics. The aim of this article is to conduct an analysis of Arūnas Valinskas’s sociolinguistic competence, regarding the correlation between stylistically marked language features (informal lexis) and the main communicative variables in spoken media: program genres (topics of conversation), the roles of participants, and their relationship with their interlocutors. During the period of research (2009–2011), Valinskas was one of the few politicians who regularly participated not only in debates, but also in entertainment programs. The five programs considered in the research were not just of different genres, but also differed in terms of the role that befell Valinskas, and especially his status. The study showed that Arūnas Valinskas, taking into account his communicational context, combined the following two things in almost all the programs: he always strove to prove his experience as a serious politician, whilst at the same time he maintained his style of being a familiar TV show host liked by viewers. These two things are precisely obvious signs of his socio-linguistic competence.

• Details
• Contents