Paranoid rhetoric in American political discourse

This paper is devoted to the study of paranoid rhetoric, a persuasive phenomenon in American political discourse aimed at mobilizing society against the enemy and cultivating an atmosphere of fear in society. Paranoid rhetoric emerges in political discourse in times of crisis or military threat, when there is a special susceptibility of society to demagogic maneuvers of politicians. The prototypical paranoid linguistic personality in American political discourse is Senator Joseph McCarthy. All strategic dominants of the paranoid personality are explicitly expressed in the politician’s discourse: increased conflictuality of discourse, aggressive manipulation and creation of an enemy image in discourse. A distinctive feature of paranoid political rhetoric is conspirativism, expressed in the dominance of the concept ＂secret conspiracy＂ in the conceptual and linguistic picture of the politician’s world. Freedom of speech in the USA contributes to the spread of conspiracy ideas in the country, which allows us to consider conspirativism as one of the characteristic features of American linguoculture. The work may be of interest to psycholinguists, journalists, public relations specialists.