The Ideological Role of Vocabulary in Ukrainian President Zelensky’s Speeches to European and National Parliaments

Abstract

The present paper is a critical discourse analysis (CDA), which is basically based on Fairclough’s (2001) Three-dimensional model, the descriptive stage. It specifically focuses on the ideological function of vocabulary in the political text. The analyzed data includes six speeches of Ukraine President Zelensky that were delivered virtually to the European and National parliaments from 1-20 March 2022. Moreover, a qualitative approach is employed as the research methodology for data analysis. However, the primary objective of this research is to address the following question: To what extent can vocabulary, specifically in terms of overwording, meaning relations, and wording at the microstructure level, reflect aspects of President Zelensky’s ideological stance as reflected in his speeches? The analysis results indicate that vocabulary reflects a significant part of President Zelensky’s ideology and he highly depends on them to send ideological messages.