The dissertation aims to analyze linguistic impression management in Hungarian language use. Impression management is mainly discussed as a socialpsychological phenomenon but it is observable in language use as well. The research is based on sociopsychological and (socio)pragmatic approaches, it takes into account the possible motivations of interlocutors, the characteristics of discourse and sitation types, the cultural and sociological factors etc.
Impression management manifests on different levels of awareness, and it affects verbal and nonverbal behavior, including the choice of linguistic items. Many studies define several patterns called impression management strategies and tactics which are adaptable for creating, maintaining or defending certain impressions. Nevertheless, the established taxonomies vary due to the analyzed corpora, methodological processes, as well as the scope of the acquired definition. The previous investigation of impression management has basically been grounded on researchers’ observations and spoken corpora. This thesis is based on different data sources, namely, multimedia corpora cointaining political debate shows, attitude questionnaire, and discourse completion test. Each data source requires a different analytical method and offers results from a different aspect because the multimedia corpora are suitable for analyzing the productive side of impression management, the questionnaire which observes the informants’ attitude to certain utterences may provide insight to the evaluational part, while the results of the discourse completion test may reveal the speakers’ motivation, the behavioral procedures, and introduce several impression management tactics.
Results show that there are certain impression management tactics used in political debate shows, and the utterances and linguistic items are based on the informants’ holistic interpretation of situations containing their world knowledge and their attitudes regarding the content of the utterances (see the questionnaire). Linguistic impression management tactics can manifest via several linguistic items and be accomplished by distinct procedures regarding the wants of the speaker’s and the hearer’s face.