Intercultural Aspects of Argumentative Reasoning (Based on Public Speeches of American and Russian Presidents)

Nowadays mass media is filled with public speeches of country leaders from all over the globe. Similarities can be found in the structure of speeches that are put out, their format and the use of argumentation. However, the relevance of this study is in the need to understand the difference in the use of argumentative and persuasive techniques by politicians with different cultural backgrounds while addressing their nations. The main methods used in this study are literature analysis and the analysis of public speeches of two representatives of different cultures which enables us to demonstrate the scientific explanation to the way the speech is constructed and reveal why speeches vary from culture to culture, country to country. In our work, we made a research on how a particular culture can influence the structure and contents of one’s public speech drawing on campaign speeches of Russian and American presidents – Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The findings reveal that the same techniques are used in the speeches, however, there was a slight difference in the proportion of the use of these techniques due to the cultural influence.