Realization of the above factors of speech regulation considered in this chapter, in our view, corresponds to the principle known as sliding mode. The sliding mode technique realized in communication as speech regulation principle provides for the flexibility of discourse, namely virtual political discourse and its adaptability to the communication situation as well as to the standards. Generally speaking, virtual political communication is regulated by the standards of diplomatic discourse and censorship less than classic political communication which is connected with the anonymity of online communicators.
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As it has been pointed out in Chapter 2, sliding mode in communication, particularly virtual communication, may be regarded as a technique of regulating discourse in accordance with the speech regulation factors creating conditions for adaptability to the situation (Aleshina, 2016).
The target content of speech (utterance) as the major regulation factor determining the outline of communication can be described in terms of dictemic information. The utterances-dictemes of political conflict communication can be marked by the atonality connected with the controversies of domineering ambitions. According to Sheigal, political discourse features an invariant speech act specificity (a set of speech acts) linked to the characteristics of a politician linguistic personality. The set of invariant speech acts reflects its functional semiotic triad “integration – orientation – atonality/ aggression” (Sheigal, 2000). Specific for conflict political discourse are the following speech acts: demand/ invocation, accusation/ verdict, irony/ sarcasm, warning/ threat. The information actualized in the utterance-dicteme (factual, intellectual, emotive, and impressive) provides for realization of speech act atonality of different degrees. We shall illustrate the above by the excerpt from the address to the nation by US president G.W. Bush dated March 17, 2003 (Bush, 2014). The address was devoted to the problem of Iraq and contains an ultimatum to the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The address may be regarded both as classic and virtual communication and is characterized by atonality manifested in different parts of the text with a different degree. The following dicteme is marked by the high atonality level:
Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals - including journalists and inspectors - should leave Iraq immediately (Bush 2014).
This dicteme of orientation type possesses, mainly, communicative and orientation information. Meanwhile, this dicteme is quite impressive, its impressively being connected with the semantics of obligation expressed impressively in rather simple syntactic structures.
If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end. In desperation, he and terrorists groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible. (Bush, 2014)
This dicteme develops the idea expressed in the previous excerpt. The speaker clearly and straightforwardly outlines his intentions using relatively simple syntactic structures containing intellectual information.