Investigative History of Russian Speech Manipulation Strategies in Republican Discourse

Donald Trump’s sophisticated use of speech manipulation strategies has inspired numerous research studies. O.I. Nazarenko and O.Ye. Nesterenko (2023) looked beyond Donald Trump at the Republican Party at large and found a pattern of manipulative effect in Republican discourse supporting Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian war. This raises many important questions for researchers. What is the political motivation for Republicans to side with Russia against Ukraine? How did this come to be? To answer these questions, this article presents the first history of Russian speech manipulation strategies in Republican discourse. The investigation traced the origin to conservative principles introduced by William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Pragmatic analysis and critical discourse analysis of Republican discourse identified manipulative strategies and techniques aligning with Russian thinking of reflexive control connected across speakers and generations. This exploratory study supports the need for further speech manipulation research of Republican discourse from a historical perspective.