Concepts of common and state values in the contemporary political discourse: the nature of cohesive and non-cohesive
The article is aimed at discussing concepts of common and state values widely used in the contemporary political discourse. In most cases they fix the point of view expressed by the political leaders of the country - President, his proponents and their opposition. These concepts sometimes suggest and sometimes just impose on the masses a certain point of view that gives way to interpreting or reinterpreting political reality. The author examines certain examples of (1) original non-cohesiveness of understanding national common values by the authority and the society; (2) frequent non-cohesiveness between the true and the imposed (by the authorities) meaning of one and the same concept; (3) contextual non-cohesiveness between the content and style of the political discourse to the toposphere of the mass audience, and finally (4) local (which is, limited to the former Soviet Union only) noncohesiveness between the official style of the state language and the "low" style of everyday speech. The author argues that common and state values correspond the best with the mass mentality of the US, whereas public political rhetoric of the US presidency does not correspond with their political actions. As a conclusion, the author offers a hypothesis, according to which the concepts of common and state values in the contemporary political discourse serve as a kind of criteria to define an election campaign discourse, not a discourse of power that is aimed at arguing for the necessity of further political steps.