<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Publishing DTD v1.3 20210610//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/1.3/JATS-journalpublishing1-3.dtd">
<article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="1.3" xml:lang="en">
  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="elibrary">80301</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Terra Linguistica</journal-title>
        <trans-title-group xml:lang="ru">
          <trans-title>Terra Linguistica</trans-title>
        </trans-title-group>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="epub">2782-5450</issn>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">8</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.18721/JHSS.17308</article-id>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Linguopragmatic Mechanisms of Verbal Self-Defense and Their Determination by Party Affiliation (Based on Bundestag Debates)</article-title>
        <trans-title-group xml:lang="ru">
          <trans-title>Лингвопрагматические механизмы речевой самозащиты и их детерминация партийной принадлежностью (на материале дебатов бундестага)</trans-title>
        </trans-title-group>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <contrib-id contrib-id-type="orcid">0009-0005-2973-3376</contrib-id>
          <name>
            <surname>Perminova</surname>
            <given-names>Galina</given-names>
          </name>
          <email>perminowa_gv@mail.ru</email>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <contrib-id contrib-id-type="orcid">0000-0002-5361-2567</contrib-id>
          <name>
            <surname>Doynikova</surname>
            <given-names>Marina</given-names>
          </name>
          <email>doynikovami@mail.ru</email>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <pub-date publication-format="electronic" date-type="pub" iso-8601-date="2026-09-30">
        <day>30</day>
        <month>09</month>
        <year>2026</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>17</volume>
      <issue>3</issue>
      <fpage>125</fpage>
      <lpage>144</lpage>
      <abstract xml:lang="en">
        <p>The strategy of verbal self-defense plays an important role in parliamentary communication. This strategy is understood as an orientation of speech behavior that is realized through a finite set of objectively existing and statistically verifiable linguopragmatic mechanisms: defensive, constructive-balanced, agonistic, and mixed. However, the question of how these mechanisms are determined by party affiliation remains open. The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that these mechanisms can be predicted with high accuracy on the basis of tactical profile and party affiliation. The theoretical framework of the analysis draws on the theory of speech strategies and tactics, pragmalinguistics, and corpus-informed discourse analysis. The corpus consists of 363 transcripts of Bundestag deputies' speeches from the 2025–2026 sessions. Each speech was annotated according to a formalized list of lexical and grammatical markers. Two classifiers (multinomial logistic regression and random forest) were compared on a full feature set (tactical frequencies and party indicators) and a reduced set (tactics only). The full model achieved perfect classification accuracy (1.00 under cross-validation). When party indicators were removed, accuracy decreased to 0.53–0.55, yet remained more than twice the chance level of 0.25. The results show that party affiliation acts as a decisive predictor fully accounting for the type of mechanism, with challenge and contrast serving as stylistic amplifiers rather than independent determinants. The identified mechanisms thus emerge not as analytical artifacts but as real, statistically robust patterns of speech behavior, shaped by the institutional role and ideological stance of each party.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group xml:lang="en">
        <kwd>verbal self-defense</kwd>
        <kwd>linguopragmatic mechanisms</kwd>
        <kwd>parliamentary debates</kwd>
        <kwd>German Bundestag</kwd>
        <kwd>tactical profiles</kwd>
        <kwd>party affiliation</kwd>
        <kwd>predictive modeling</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <back>
    <ref-list>
      <title>References</title>
      <ref id="ref1">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Khlopotunov Ya.Y., Linguistic Methods of Implementing a Communicative Strategy of Self-Defense in American Political Discourse. Professional Discourse &amp; Communication, 4 (2) (2022) 7–17. DOI: 10.24833/2687-0126-2022-4-2-7-17</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref2">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Hansson S., Discursive strategies of blame avoidance in government: A framework for analysis, Discourse &amp; Society, 26 (3) (2015) 297–322. DOI: 10.1177/0957926514564736</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref3">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Ilie C., How to Argue with Questions and Answers: Argumentation Strategies in Parliamentary Deliberation, Languages, 7 (3) (2022) 205. DOI: 10.3390/languages7030205.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref4">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Nguyen T.B.G., Tran X.H., The Rhetoric of Rejection: Deny and Counter in Trump and Harris’s 2024 Debate Discourse, Terra Linguistica, 17 (2) (2026) 111–133. DOI: 10.18721/JHSS.17207</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref5">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Vallauri E.L., Aggression and disagreement in public communication: Convincing third parties through implicit strategies, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 12 (1) (2024) 41–65. DOI: 10.1075/jlac.00096.lom</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref6">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Berrocal M., Delegitimization strategies in Czech parliamentary discourse, Political Discourse in Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe, ed. by M. Podboj et al., John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2019, pp. 119–146. DOI: 10.1075/dapsac.84.06ber</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref7">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Ferrer L.P., Rautajoki H., Navigating coercion in political rhetoric: shifting strategies to cope with intervention by the Troika in Portugal, Contemporary Politics, 26 (2) (2020) 206–225. DOI: 10.1080/13569775.2019.1663394</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref8">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Perminova G.V., Self-defense strategies in crisis communication: statistical verification of the dependence of tactic choice on crisis type (based on the discourse of the ruling coalition of the Fede-ral Republic of Germany), Philology. Theory &amp; Practice, 18 (9) (2025) 4107–4118. DOI: 10.30853/phil20250561</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref9">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Ilie C., Discourse and metadiscourse in parliamentary debates, Journal of Language and Politics, 2 (1) (2003) 71–92. DOI: 10.1075/jlp.2.1.05ili</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref10">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Burkhardt A., Zwischenrufe, Zwischenfragen, Kurzinterventionen, Handbuch Politische Rhetorik, hrsg. von A. Burkhardt, De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston, 2020, S. 739–764.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref11">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Koch E., Küpfer A., The politics of seeking and avoiding discourse in parliament, European Journal of Political Research, 64 (4) (2025) 1899–1922. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.70013</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref12">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Parshina O.N., Rossiyskaya politicheskaya rech': teoriya i praktika [Russian political speech: theory and practice], 3rd ed., LIBROKOM, Moscow, 2012.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref13">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Van Dijk T.A., Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Sage, London, 1998.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref14">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Wodak R., The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, Sage, London, 2015. DOI: 10.4135/9781446270073</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref15">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Khramchenko D.S., The Mechanism of Verbal Warfare &amp; Polarization: Exploring Communicative Strategies in American Political Discourse, Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 16 (1) (2025) 105–124. DOI: 10.22055/RALS.2024.47805.3363</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref16">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Snijder L.L., Gross J., De Dreu C.K.W., How defense rhetoric escalates intergroup conflict, iScience, 28 (11) (2025) 113749. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113749</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref17">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Issers O.S., Kommunikativnyye strategii i taktiki russkoy rechi [Communicative strategies and tactics of Russian speech], 9th ed., LENAND, Moscow, 2024.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref18">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Sheygal E.I., Semiotika politicheskogo diskursa [Semiotics of political discourse], Gnozis, Moscow, 2004.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref19">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Glushak V.M., Discursive Asymmetry of the Ethnonymic German Adjectives Deutsch and Russisch (A Corpus-based Statistical Study of the Self/Other Dichotomy), Terra Linguistica, 17 (2) (2026) 24–41. DOI: 10.18721/JHSS.17202</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref20">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Chernyavskaya V.E., Gorshkova N.E., Hybrid genre in persuasive communication, Slovo.ru: Baltic accent, 16 (1) (2025) 74–89. DOI: 10.5922/2225-5346-2025-1-5</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref21">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Benoit W.L., Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies: A Theory of Image Restoration Strategies, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1995.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref22">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Naderi N., Hirst G., Recognizing Reputation Defence Strategies in Critical Political Exchanges, Proceedings of the Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP), Varna, 2017, pp. 527–537. DOI: 10.26615/978-954-452-049-6_069</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref23">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Naderi N., Hirst G., Using context to identify the language of face-saving, Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Argument Mining, Section 2.3. Brussels, 2018, pp. 111–120. DOI: 10.18653/v1/W18-5214</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref24">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Ezan I.E., Realisation of the Factor of the Addresee in Roman Herzog’s Speeches on Foreign and Domestic Policy, Vestnik Omskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta. Gumanitarnye issledovaniya [Bulletin of Omsk State Pedagogical University. Humanitarian studies], 3 (7) (2015) 45–49.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref25">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Doynikova M.I., Features of Implementation of the Communicative Strategy of Self-Defense in German Political Discourse, The world of science, culture and education, 1 (110) (2025) 526–528. DOI: 10.24412/1991-5497-2025-1110-526-529</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref26">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Doynikova M.I., Speech behavior of deputies of the "Alternative for Germany" party (based on the materials of the Bundestag transcripts), Philology. Theory &amp; Practice, 18 (3) (2025) 844–850. DOI: 10.30853/phil20250120</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref27">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Glushak V.M., Printsipalova O.V., Verbalizing Face-Threatening Intentions in German Political Discourse, Issues of Cognitive Linguistics, 4 (2020) 92–99. DOI: 10.20916/1812-3228-2020-4-92-99</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref28">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Pätz L., Beyer M., Späth J., Bohlen L., Zschech P., Kraus M., Rosenberger J., Analyzing German Parliamentary Speeches: A Machine Learning Approach for Topic and Sentiment Classification, Journal of Computational Social Science, 8 (1) (2025) 45–67. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2508.03181</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref29">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Bornheim T., Speaker Attribution in German Parliamentary Debates with QLoRA-adapted Large Language Models, Journal for Language Technology and Computational Linguistics, 37 (1) (2024) 1–13. DOI: 10.21248/jlcl.37.2024.244</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref30">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Bisiada M., The discursive construction of a new reality in Olaf Scholz's Zeitenwende speech, Critical Discourse Studies, 21 (6) (2024) 629–646. DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2023.2186450</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref31">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Grimmer J., Stewart B.M., Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts, Political Analysis, 21 (3) (2013) 267–297. DOI: 10.1093/pan/mps028</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref32">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Gentzkow M., Kelly B., Taddy M., Text as Data, Journal of Economic Literature, 57 (3) (2019) 535–574. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20181020</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref33">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Hirst G., Riabinin Ya., Graham J., Party status as a confound in the automatic classification of political speech by ideology, Statistical Analysis of Textual Data: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (JADT 2010), ed. by S. Bolasco, I. Chiari, L. Giuliano, LED, Milano, 2010, pp. 731–742.</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref34">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Rheault L., Cochrane Ch., Word Embeddings for the Analysis of Ideological Placement in Parliamentary Corpora, Political Analysis, 28 (1) (2020) 112–133. DOI: 10.1017/pan.2019.26</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref35">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Kaminchenko D.I., Forecasting the results of the federal election to the German parliament in 2025 based on neural network modeling, Tomsk State University Journal of Philosophy, Sociology and Political Science, 84 (2025) 219–235. DOI: 10.17223/1998863X/84/18</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref36">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Erhard L., Hanke S., Remer U., Falenska A., Heiberger R.H., PopBERT. Detecting Populism and Its Host Ideologies in the German Bundestag, Political Analysis, 33 (1) (2025) 1–17. DOI: 10.1017/pan.2024.12</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref37">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Axmadjonov N.Z.O., Qizi K.M., Revisiting speech act theory in German linguistics: a systematic review of methodological approaches, Cogent Arts &amp; Humanities, 12 (1) (2025) 2568967. DOI: 10.1080/23311983.2025.2568967</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref38">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Chicherina N.V., Chernyavskaya V.E., Khokhlova M.V., Tekstovyye i diskursivnyye dannyye v tsifrovoy mediasrede: osnovnyye printsipy lingvisticheskogo analiza i avtomaticheskoy obrabotki [Text and discourse data in digital media environment: basic principles of linguistic analysis and automatic processing], Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great, Saint-Petersburg, 2025. DOI: 10.18720/SPBPU/2/i25-61</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref39">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">Chernyavskaya V.E., Deontic meaning of a discursive key word: corpus-assisted analysis of west-liche Werte (western values), Terra Linguistica, 16 (1) (2025) 82–98. DOI: 10.18721/JHSS.16106</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref40">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">The Practice of Qualitative Data Analysis: Research Examples Using MAXQDA, ed. by S. Rädiker, M.C. Gizzi. Vol. 2, MAXQDA Press, Berlin, 2024. DOI: 10.36192/978-3-948768188</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref41">
        <mixed-citation publication-type="journal">James G., Witten D., Hastie T., Tibshirani R., An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R, 2nd ed., Springer, New York, 2021. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1418-1</mixed-citation>
      </ref>
    </ref-list>
  </back>
</article>
