TED TALKS: COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the specificity of verbalizating communicative strategies and tactics of speeches in the TED format, which are becoming an increasingly popular way of self-education and dissemination of progressive ideas among viewers and Internet users of various ages. The relevance of the work is determined by the insufficient number of conducted studies aimed at the multi-vector linguistic and stylistic and functional characteristics of TED speeches. The article clarifies the genre specificity of lectures and speeches in the TED format and defines their hybrid nature. Hybridity refers to the fact that TED Talks lectures belong to public speeches that contain characteristics of publicistic, colloquial, and occasionally artistic and scientific styles of speech. It is considered that the TED lecture is a multimodal text that contains communication parameters in the form of a live interactive lecture, where the text of the lecture is accompanied by infographics, video, audio and presentation materials, and the non-verbal reaction of the audience (laughter, applause, gestures) is part of this multimodal text. It is indicated that speeches in the TED format are characterized by brevity of expressions, a clear and logical syntactic structure with the use of a significant number of connecting and parenthetical phrases, and a high level of persuasiveness. The article analyzes such features of lectures in the format of TED Talks as the limitation in duration (up to 18 minutes, a timer is in front of the lecturers), the use of elements of humor and satire for the formation of ideological beliefs. “Communicative strategy” is considered as a pattern of behavior aimed at achieving a communicative aim through the selection of specific communicative tactics. The article determines that one of the most frequently used communicative strategies in TED speeches is the strategy of argumentation, which is implemented with the help of such communicative tactics as justification tactics, quoting, providing examples, appealing to authorities. The analysis of English language TED Talks lectures proves that quoting, giving examples, establishing cause-and-effect relations are productive communicative tactics.