A Critical Discourse Analysis on the Presidential Discourse: Focusing on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Linguistic and Discoursal Strategies for Persuasion

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Addresses delivered by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, during the Russia Ukraine war have drawn worldwide attention and have been considered persuasive. The purpose of this study is to analyze President Zelenskyy’s discourse from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Specifically, with the help of CDA, this study explores what linguistic and discoursal strategies he has employed to persuade others to achieve his goals. This paper also examines how these strategies have become persuasive by exploring three key elements of Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos; how social and political situations are reflected in his speeches is also assessed. To this end, this study analyzes three speeches made by President Zelenskyy to the European Parliament, the U.S. Congress, and the Japanese Parliament. The findings show that President Zelenskyy has used three persuasive strategies (lexical choices, grammatical structure, and evoking history) and has achieved partial success in receiving financial, political, and humanitarian support from other countries.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 이원표, "대북 평화․비핵화 메시지의 담화분석: 설득을 위한 언어 및 담화 전략과 효과에서의 한계" 한국언어학회 46 (46): 429-480, 2021

2 Afzal, Summaya, "Using Rhetorical and Persuasive Techniques: A Political Discourse Analysis of the Victory Speech by Imran Khan" 3 (3): 105-121, 2021

3 Raissouni, Iman, "The language of American political discourse: Aristotle's rhetorical appeals as manifested in Bush's and Obama's speeches on the war on terror" 6 (6): 38-48, 2020

4 Charteris-Black, Jonathan, "Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor" Springer 2011

5 Ghasemi, Farshad, "Persuasive Language in Presidential Speeches: A Contrastive Study Based on Aristotelian Rhetoric" 12 : 19-38, 2020

6 Pelclová, Jana, "Persuasion in Public Discourse: Cognitive and functional perspectives (Volume 79)" John Benjamins Publishing Company 2018

7 Khalil, Uzma, "Persuasion and political discourse: A critical discourse analysis of Imran Khan's election speech (2013)" 18 (18): 193-210, 2017

8 Halmari, Helena, "Persuasion across genres" 229-245, 2005

9 Halmari, Helena, "Persuasion across genres" John Benjamins 105-134, 2005

10 Putin, Vladimir, "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians" President of Russia

11 Esch, Joanne, "Legitimizing the “War on Terror”: Political myth in official-level rhetoric" 31 (31): 357-391, 2010

12 Schubert, Christoph, "Introduction to Discourse Studies" 1-469, 2018

13 Weiss, Joshua N, "From Aristotle to Sadat: A Short Strategic Persuasion Framework for Negotiators" 31 (31): 211-222, 2015

14 Miceli, Maria, "Emotional and non-emotional persuasion" 20 (20): 849-879, 2006

15 Simonsen, Sandra, "Discursive legitimation strategies: The evolving legitimation of war in Israeli public diplomacy" 30 (30): 503-520, 2019

16 Van Dijk, Teun A., "Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction" Sage 2011

17 Chilton, Paul, "Discourse and Politics" 303-330, 2011

18 Rababah, Alaa G., "A Contrastive Critical Discourse Analysis of Netanyahu's and Abbas's Speeches on the Gaza War (2014)" 10 (10): 178-189, 2019

19 Yasmin, Musarat, "(De-) Legitimizing War: a linguistic analysis of Indian and Pakistani civil and military conflict discourses" 1-22, 2023