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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:3 (2025) ► pp.437–459

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Revisiting the rhetorical construction of political consent

‘We-strategies’ and pronouns in British and Russian Covid-19 discourse

ORCiD logo with link | University of Catania
 | RUDN University
 | RUDN University
Published online: 29 March 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22199.pon
Abstract
How political leaders construct consent is a constant theme of studies in political rhetoric and theories of persuasion. We explore how populist linguistic strategies combine with traditional consensus-building to align populations with the speakers’ messages. We observe similarities and differences in discourse strategies across two contrasting polities, the UK, a foundational modern representative democracy and Russia, which is considered more autocratic. The data comes from speeches given by Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin during the Covid-19 crisis. They were analysed using Corpus Linguistics, compared in qualitative analysis that identities key lexico-grammatical features. The findings show a convergence in some of the strategies and linguistic styles, but also key differences which, we suggest, depend on cultural factors specific to the two nations. The results contribute to our understanding of the operation of these resources in modern political discourse, highlighting the way cultural factors influence rhetorical styles in very different political structures.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Background and research aims
  • 2.We-strategy and the pragmatics of pronoun use
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Use of ‘we’
    • 4.2Use of ‘I’
    • 4.3Other lexical/ discursive means of construing community/solidarity
    • 4.4Emotive persuasion, distance reduction, informality and populism
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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