A Discourse Analysis of the Relations between Russia and the United States of America

The diploma thesis analyses U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship based on the interpretation of discourses, interviews and speeches of the American and Russian presidents since September 2001 till December 2013. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, and more specifically Membership Categorization Analysis, as a theoretical and methodological basis of the analysis, the thesis categorizes specific periods of the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship into three categories - positive, neutral and negative. Each category is defined by two basic concepts of the Membership Categorization Analysis - by the collections of positive, neutral and negative categories, which were addressed by the presidents to their counterparts, and by the category-tied predicates related to the particular categories. The final categorization of the U.S.-Russian relations is contrasted with conventional political affairs aiming to highlight the parallels between the categorization changes based on the discourses and the changes in the conventional political context. The diploma thesis offers an alternative view on the U.S.-Russian relations