Verbalization of communicative strategies in foreign policy discourse: a case study of the Russian President’s addresses to the international audience

This study is driven by the growing importance of political rhetoric in international relations, where the linguistic tools employed by the speaker serve as instruments for strategically managing the perception of the audience. It also addresses the interplay between language and politics under conditions of global international tensions. The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the verbalization of communicative strategies within the foreign policy discourse of the President of the Russian Federation, using textual addresses to the international audience as a case study. The study focuses on a comparative analysis of dynamic changes in foreign policy discourse, the mechanisms and means of implementing cooperative and confrontational strategies through communicative tactics within a rigid genre framework, and the pragmatic-semantic role of these strategies in achieving extralinguistic objectives. The novelty of this study lies in its comprehensive approach to analyzing the President’s foreign policy addresses, integrating linguistic, pragmatic, and genre-discursive aspects. For the first time, a detailed comparison of cooperative and confrontational strategies is conducted through the lens of their linguistic realization in the context of temporal dynamics. It has been determined that the genre structure and linguistic implementation of the President's foreign policy addresses adapt to shifts in the geopolitical context, ensuring the flexibility of foreign policy discourse. The cooperative strategy employed focuses on strengthening Russia's positive image by emphasizing historical ties, shared values, and pros­pects for partnership, whereas the confrontational strategy utilizes specific tactics to inf­luence imp­licit audiences. The multi-level approach to audience segmentation enables the President's fo­reign policy discourse to effectively combine strategic perception management of explicit audiences with addressing implicit political objectives.