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In the paper, on the basis of a multimodal critical discourse analysis of political posters and social media posts, the authors outline the complex interplay of multimodal means serving to convey a political leader’s charisma. The paper aims to advance a set of historically conventionalized features typical of the charismatic personality (such as intelligence, self-confidence, persistence, ability to inspire, sociability, dominance, narcissism, and vision), present the updated definition of this notion, and substantiate theoretical and methodological grounds for the study of the interplay of multimodal means portraying a charismatic political leader that assist in conveying a political speaker’s charisma creation through its graphical image, namely political posters and social media posts. The results of the study reveal that charisma is a complex communicative and cognitive phenomenon reflecting person’s beliefs about certain innate, obtained or promoted by media, internal or external subliminal traits of a leader. These beliefs are shaped in the recipients’ consciousness during interactive communication on the basis of the leader’s strategy, techniques, and methods used in oral or written communication, as well as a set of linguistic and extralinguistic means associated with the speaker’s ability to satisfy certain needs of the community. As a study material the authors opted for the images of Boris Johnson, a politician already acknowledged as a charismatic one by international audiences, who has been a prominent political figure for almost a decade and has recently come to the forefront of political and diplomatic support of Ukraine in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The carried out analysis proves the highly informative as well as subliminal potential of multimodal visual pictographic means aimed at creating a charismatic image of a public person. The authors outline a set of verbal (elliptical sentences, catchy slogans in imperative mood, assonance, alliteration, the use of first person plural pronoun “We”, the lexical unit together, etc.) and visual-graphical means (font of the message, symbolic colour scheme, clothes style, body posture, gestures, oculesic features, etc.), whose interaction is aimed at triggering cognitive processes in the recipient’s mind in perceiving a charismatic image of the politician. Boris Johnson’s charisma is confirmed by the survey conducted among British and Ukrainian respondents as well as by his subscribers’ reactions, comments and likes following his posts on social media. The carried out analysis allows summarising the markers of a politician’s charisma portrayed on social media as follows: the number of comments and likes for their posts; informality while addressing the Prime Minister by his first name “Boris” and presence of a “popular name” “BoJo”; high degree of the followers’ messages expressiveness actualised through verbal means (significant amount of exclamatory sentences, interjections, evaluative epithets and idiomatic expressions), as well as graphical-visual means, in particular through the usage of graphic emoticons (emojis), serving to intensify the overall expressiveness of a message. The conclusion is that social media graphical images are aimed at conveying charismatic political leaders’ vision, offering their followers support and promise of a better future, portraying them as approachable, down-to-earth, considerate but at the same time serious leaders, ready to work to endure a better future. The results of the performed study can provide grounds for interdisciplinary research of both oral and written charismatic communication within the cognitive approach framework considering verbal, nonverbal and paralingual means’ (physiological, psychological, social, etc.) interplay that allows the audience to perceive a speaker as a charismatic one.

Charisma is a complex phenomenon. This fact manifests itself not least in an abundance of myths, half-truths, and unanswered research questions. Most charisma myths have not been uncontroversial, and since empirical investigations have advanced quickly over the past years, we take the opportunity in this paper to revisit ten of the most important myths that relate primarily, but not exclusively, to the linguistic and phonetic aspects of charisma, such as the interactions between verbal and nonverbal and between segmental and prosodic cues, as well as the roles of breathing and fundamental frequency in charisma perception. The result is a very diverse picture. Some myths, including very old ones, can be accepted. Others must be rejected in the light of contradicting empirical results. The status of some myths remains unsettled. Furthermore, in discussing that diverse picture, our paper points towards knowledge gaps in research and practice and gives concrete directions as to where to go from here.

The key issue of leadership in the democratic process reflects different perspectives that affect the relationship between legitimacy and power, the perspective of a “prejudice” towards leadership due to the excessive concentration of power, and the types of trust and linkage that the leader can activate in the processes of personalization of politics, within, beyond, against or notwithstanding political parties. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the different paths and the different role of leadership in the transformation from party democracy to leader democracy on the celebration of the hundred years since Weber’s 1919 lecture “Politik als Beruf”. Regarding this topic, we consider the concept of plebiscitarism, the different ways in which this process develops, and the relationship between leadership, charisma and democracy in contemporary societies. In order to explore this research field it is necessary to consider the key role of charisma in the Weberian sociological work, not only in reference to the sociology of power, but starting from the relationship between disenchantment and bureaucratization in Western rationalization. The clarification of these concepts is far from nominalistic considering that they point out the different substance that plebiscitary disintermediation assumes in the relationship between leadership and democracy. Just this is the premise that allows distinguishing the difference between the personalization in liberal-democracies, the charismatic personalization and the populist personalization. Although a large part of the literature on populism tends to equate the populist leadership with the charismatic one, there is however a more recent questioning of the overlapping of the two phenomena. The paper aims to analyse the Weberian theory of charisma and to answer the question of whether charisma still has a chance in hyper-rationalized contemporary societies. Moreover, if the charisma requires a higher quality, who can be defined as a charismatic leader today?

The paper analyses hagiographical strategies used by the writers of St. Sava’s vitae, the purpose of which was to delineate clearly the principal features of the saint’s portrait. Their main concern was to confirm Sava’s personal charisma and to convey a sense of his saintly authority. The focus of the paper is on the hagiographical techniques of imitation such as comparing the hero to biblical models and telling stories of his miracles that repeat the miracles of Christ himself and the most important saints. The paper devotes particular attention to those sections of the vitae that describe Sava’s wielding institutional authority, and it is precisely here that there are notable similarities between Teodosije’s vita and his hagiographical model, the vita of St. Sava of Jerusalem by Cyril of Skythopolis. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177003: Srednjovekovno nasleđe Balkana - institucije i kultura]

Can Weber's theory of charisma be of use in the study of religious orders, of the founders themselves and the foundation process more especially? In that perspective, the present paper raises the question whether the founder, when he is a priest, can enjoy personal charisma, and if so, with what consequences, particularly in the case of quasi prophetic charisma. The problem is here approached both in theorical and historical perspective, around the case of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716), the founder of the Missionaries of the Society of Mary (Montfortian Fathers) and the Daughters of Wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the relationship between politics, media and publicness, this paper ponders the consequences of visibility in the political field. Identifying some of its existing regimes, it will posit that today visibility plays an ambivalent function to politics: it can simultaneously operate as a synoptic monitoring and control of politicians; and at the same time it may stand as an opportunity to build a charismatic leadership. In fact, political visibilities are now negotiated between the boundaries of private and public realms, and they can take the form of a risk, or an opportunity to build on a charismatic leadership.

The mass-media production of pontifical charisma made of the papal voyage to Canada a veritable mass-communication celebration. But, it is precisely in this that the event has taken on its specific religious dimension, structuring into one single emotional communion the paradoxical identity of a public otherwise dispensed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]