Suchergebnisse

Though in the past charisma was perceived as something extraordinary, divine and irrational, nowadays the concept is treated as a psychological phenomenon, rooted in the leaders' ability to persuade and motivate the followers. While charisma is not limited to the personality traits of a leader, but is rather an interplay between the characteristics of the leader, the followers and the context, certain psychological features and communication skills of the leaders serve as a starting point in forging a charismatic appeal. In our research we advocate the approach according to which different charismatic leaders have common psychological characteristics, which are reflected in the peculiarities of their discourse. Thus, the political speeches of charismatic leaders may as well contain common verbal patterns. The aim of our research is to identify these verbal patterns and use them in decoding universal personality characteristics of charismatic leaders. To meet the aim of our research, we have conducted psychological content analysis of 18 most significant political speeches of the most charismatic American presidents of the last 50 years, namely John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. In order to distinguish between charismatic and non-charismatic rhetoric, we have additionally analyzed 6 speeches of the least charismatic American president of the period – Gerald Ford. Psychological content analysis was complemented with the recommendations from critical discourse analysis, which allowed us to examine the influence of context and audience characteristics on the use of certain linguistic categories by charismatic leaders. We have employed our findings in developing the recommendations for speechwriters, which explain how specific frequencies of certain linguistic categories may enhance the perceptions of the leader's extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability and other Big Five personality traits by the audience. Finally, we draw the attention of speech-writers to the observation that the use of ...