„Wir Schaffen Das!“ (Angela Merkel as a Linguistic Persona)

. The problem posed by the authors of this paper is to reveal peculiarities of linguistic persona of one of the most authoritative state and political actors of our time: Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Material for the research comes from various election debates, speeches at international forums and in Bundestag, addresses to voters, interviews of "the engine of the EU" with journalists of various media outlets. An anthropocentric approach that has become the main principle of modern linguistics, enriched with procedures having being developed within cultural, political and social linguistics, application of methods used in study of linguistic persona in the context of gender and values presented in the media and political discourse, allowed to attain certain results . Lexical and idiomatic markers in Angela Merkel's speeches, her formulation of basic principles of domestic and foreign policy, linguistic response to crisis events and provocative questions give a possibility to model the main parameters of her linguistic persona. She is a strong leader with muffled gender attributes, which usually appear in selection of linguistic means that always conform to the literary language. Physical chemist by education, Merkel speaks logically and strictly to the point in the media and political discourse as well. Having being ushered into the elite of male rulers, A. Merkel realizes male rigidity when formulating her opinion. As a leader of nation, she presents herself as a representative of the whole German society, a society allotted with a high mission to guard common European values. The main concepts, verbalized in her speeches and utterances are We (, the people of Germany), Peace, Freedom, Democracy, Tolerance.


Introduction
Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel is an established leader of the European Union, and together with the presidents of Russia, the USA and France is a part of global political elite. In March of 2018 she was elected for her fourth term as a Federal Chancellor of Germany. Her rise as a politician, her relationships with Russia and Vladimir Putin personally have received some attention from authors of this paper and their colleagues (See [1][2][3][4][5]). However, specific features of Angela Merkel's speech as a nonstandard linguistic persona still have not been explored. She is widely known, she is listened to by millions of people worldwide, her opinion shall be taken into consideration by many male leaders of various countries. The secret of her success as a politician and a statesperson are largely determined not only by the perceptive nature of her public speeches. She is capable of feeling the audience's disposition, clearly formulating her thoughts, offering a reasonable way out of a complex situation, while not separating herself from the people of Germany, with which she is inextricably connected and whose prosperity she really tends to. Angela Merkel's utterances are notable for their brevity and extreme simplicity. It is no mere chance, that some of her expressions are perceived as slogans capable of uniting the nation. However, Angela Merkel is not only the first person of the united Germany. She is a politician of a global scale and being re-elected as a Chancellor of Germany, this woman deservedly received appreciation not only as the head of her country: «"Decisions on key issues will be made by Merkel personally, this is a feature of a strong Chancellor, who has taken this position more than once and has understanding on how to pursue international policy. This is not a new feature: This role has been previously taken by chancellors Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Willy Brandt",says Julius von Freytag-Loringhoven» ( [6]). To get such appreciation, an individual must undoubtedly be an unconventional linguistic persona.

Main part
The term linguistic persona found wide currency in Russian and foreign linguistics during a new stage of its development that started in 1970s, when anthropocentrism has become one of the main principles of global linguistics. An individual has become an origin, determining subject, tasks, methods and values of the modern linguistics ([7: 69]). That is why scholars are attentive to the language of an individual person.
The term linguistic persona is widely used in social and psycholinguistics, in language education and cultural linguistics. The phenomenon behind this term was a subject of a number of works. Truth be told, a well-known specialist in political linguistics, V.A. Chudinov thinks, that this term is superfluous. He believes, that there is no such thing as a "non-linguistic persona", that an individual becomes a person only in the process of socialization ( [8]). However, we tend to agree with Yu.N. Karaulov, who wrote, that the linguistic persona finds expression in language and through the language it carries the characteristics of culture that is reflected by this language ( [9]).
V.I. Karasik holds, that the term discourse persona fits the nature of the phenomenon better. The scholar insists on distinguishing several types of discourse personae: poet or philosopher, politician, scientist, teacher, lawyer, priest. One of manifestations of a multidimensional personality is its discourse specificity, which shall be assessed while "taking into account individual characteristics of the subject, as well as their status attributes: gender, age, educational status, belonging to a certain ethnic and culture and epoch" ([10: 128]).
As a linguistic persona, Angela Merkel is undoubtedly very interesting. She is one of few female politicians of the highest level and the only representative of the fairer sex taking the position of the Federal Chancellor of Germany so far. Angela Merkel is 64; she is physical chemist by education. Natural sciences helped this talented woman to develop implacable logic in reasoning and thoroughness in selection of arguments. She has grown up in the German Democratic Republic, where she was a member of pioneer organization and later of Free German Youth. It is not improbable, that lack of children contributed to Angela's choice to become a career politician.
Reasoning about linguistic person, V.I. Karasik mentions "communicative indicators of speaker's belonging to this or that social institution" ([10: 128]). It includes vocabulary and idioms, as well as some communication arrangements and patterns. Angela Merkel's speech is publicistic, it is rich with words and expressions pertaining to the social and political field: military conflict, establishment of a dialog, peaceful settlement, violation of territorial integrity, annexation, rocket test, nuclear threat, etc. She is an orator of a specific constitution: she knows how to convince her listeners without grandstanding and extravagant feats. Masculine hegemony of power forces her, a female politician to be rigid and to act decisively. For example, when speaking of her disagreements with Vladimir Putin and his supposed grievance over criticism in the field of human rights on behalf of Germany, Angela Merkel highlights impossibility to show feminine character in politics: «Wenn ich immer gleich eingeschnappt wäre, könnte ich keine drei Tage ([18]). By using the we pronoun Angela Merkel shares the Nazi Germany's guilt in front of the world, which undoubtedly brings up sympathy and response in her listeners.
One of types of the political discourse is a mediapolitical discourse, appearing as agitation / propaganda and commentary of political analysts on some events. The objective of this discourse lies in a characteristic of a certain political course. This discourse is realized as support, criticism or neutral analysis.
During the election campaign, Angela Merkel participated in a Saturday political talk show on Das Erste, the German public TV channel. Answering the question of Anne Will about her motivation for running for the fourth term, she said: «Die Frage ist, was kann ich dem Land geben» / The question is, what I can give to my country.
Political analysts later said that it is an ideal answer for a politician standing in an election. The strongest criticism Merkel has received for her attitude to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposition party and Pegida popular movement, which reflect opinion of a significant part of German people opposing islamisation of the West.  ([12]). Irony of the observer is evident, for it is widely-known, that the fourth re-election of Angela Merkel as a Federal Chancellor was troublesome. No party was able to get the necessary number of votes, so a decision was made to create a ruling coalition of CDU/CSU and SDP. And while the parliamentary elections were held back in the autumn of 2017, Angela Merkel was officially inaugurated only in spring of 2018. ( [21]).

Conclusion
Analysis of discourse persona of the Chancellor of Germany allows us to conclude, that the politician's speech contains communicative and pragmalinguisitc indicators giving the recipient an ability to determine her status, ethnic belonging and Merkel's attitude to a certain event or phenomenon. At that, the Chancellor herself is more of a ritual communicative persona. She follows the rigid rules, imposed onto any high-level politician, tries to maximally level her individuality, appearing as a protector of nation and peacemaker of the EU. That is, the political discourse has made an imprint onto her linguistic persona and has formed an image of the German leader Angela Merkel as a supporter of modern European values, tolerance and behavior reactions dictated by the Western civilization.