Use of the discourse analysis method to study current political practice (by the example of representation of the political leader image)

The potentialities in the application of the discourse analysis method to study a political discourse as a current political practice are shown. The authors, using the Foucault methodology, offer a sociological definition for the political discourse. It is the authors’ opinion that the approach mentioned allows investigating a political discourse as a practice for the formation of a certain reality, specific agents, institutions and organizations. A political discourse is a simulative dynamic model of political area where various subdiscourses interact, thus creating their own ideas of policy, symbols and images. Subdiscourses of political leaders become dominating. Inasmuch as a political discourse in a current political system is carried out with the aid of mass media, it could be considered as a media discourse of policy. The authors consider the representation as a basic mechanism for the formation of a political discourse, by the example of the representation of the image of V.V. Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. The representation of a political leader image in a political discourse has a number of peculiarities. It is carried out on the basis of certain principles with the aid of the system of political codes. Empiric investigations allowed making a conclusion that the main symbolic image for the Russian President is an image of a super-hero. It is the authors’ opinion, the image of V.V. Putin as a leader super-hero is determined by the specificity of the Russian political culture within the limits of which a leader is a center of power establishing an authoritarian style of ruling. The authors show the process of the political legitimacy displacement from the institutional level to the personal one by means of mass media. A political leader gains a status of a subject establishing moral, social and value reference points for the whole of the society