This article focuses on the problem of rituality in contemporary political discourse. It describes the specificity of manifestations of rituality in political discourse on the example of the Russian variant. The material for research is served by the official public texts of utterances made by V.V. Zhirinovsky published in the party newspapers of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in year 2021. The study was carried out using discourse analysis. In the theoretical part definitions of ambiguous terms are given, which undoubtedly include discourse, political discourse, and ritual. Their accepted definitions and concepts are indicated. Observations are made on the linguistic forms of ritual expression in politics, which are mainly associated with the performance of a specific political function. It has been proven that rituality in political discourse is opposed to informativeness and manifested in the fulfilment of the assigned specific political role and tasks in society.

The relevance of the study is explained by the growing popularity of a political Internet, thanks to which all politicians, regardless of age and status, are able to address an audience directly without resorting to intermediaries such as the media. Taking into account the main goal of political communication – the manipulation of public consciousness, it seems especially relevant to find out what persuasive strategies politicians use to manipulate public opinion and convince their audiences of the correctness of their judgments as made opportune by the political Internet. Thus, in the present study, an attempt has been made to answer the question as to whether there are differences in the strategies and tactics of persuasion used in the personal blogs of two generations of politicians. Using the methods of computer linguistics, analyzed were ten personal blogs of politicians of different age. The study found that both young and more experienced politicians with varying degrees of intensity resort to employing all the analyzed strategies and persuasion tactics. The most popular tactics found in the blogs of the younger generation of politicians were call‑for‑action tactics, and in the blogs of their older colleagues – the tactics of incrimination.