Announcing COVID19 as a global pandemic

Abstract

In an unprecedented scene, most of the presidents and prime ministers all over the world announce Coronavirus as a global pandemic in speeches which carry with them great fear. Naturally, and since no solution is introduced for the near future, there must be persuasion for raising moral and instilling a sense of national duty to overcome this crisis. However, Covid19 has a peculiar impact on every aspect of life including the political speeches. Persuasion in such speeches might be fruitless. Therefore, since rhetorical devices could be means for persuasion, in this discourse analysis study, rhetorical devices will be investigated by means of a model composed of Van Dijk's (1980) model of text analysis, and Burke's (1969) model of rhetorical devices. As for the data, two political speeches are chosen; the Germanic Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and the Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be analyzed to decipher the use of those devices to find out their contribution in making powerful speeches in changing people’s attitudes, then in creating the required ideology. However, the results show that through Covid19 situation, whether the speech is persuasive and powerful or not, many concepts have changed.