Address to the Nation as a Genre of Military-Political Discourse

Abstract

The political rhetoric prevailing in democratic countries does not allow an open demonstration of commitment to military means of conflict resolution and, therefore, naturally gives rise to a special type of discourse, the linguistic and extralinguistic contexts of which are determined by the goal of initiating a war. This study aims to analyze the components of military-political discourse, as well as the ways they are implemented in the texts and the role they play in manipulating public opinion. The authors defines military-political discourse as the discourse of political elites accompanying various stages of military operations and developed to substantiate the need for their initiation based on the fundamental values of a particular society. The relevance of this study is determined both by the increased interest in military conflicts in modern society and by the insufficient study of military-political discourse in general. Address to the nation is one of the main genres of military-political discourse. The novelty of the research is determined by the authors approach to the analysis and interpretation of military-political discourse. The original texts of the addresses to the nation by B. Obama and D. Trump dedicated to the US military operations in Syria are used as the research material. The choice of these texts is due to their significant role in the coverage of the US Syrian campaign. Describing military-political discourse requires the use of a number of methods, namely descriptive and comparative methods, dictionary definitions and contextual analyses, as well as the method of critical discourse analysis. The authors established that, regardless of the administration in power, address to the nation as a genre of military-political discourse implies a certain scenario based on the following scheme: greeting - address to the nation agenda - description of US actions - description of violence (accusations) - description of the US role in the world - reference to previous military campaigns - call to action. The authors comes to the conclusion that each of these components plays a substantial role in the structure of military-political discourse and is realized through a certain set of discursive means that do not depend on the political preferences of a speaker.