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The Use of Syntax and Lexicon Structures in Political Discourse: A Case Study of Boris Johnson’s Speeches on COVID-19
Dalarna University, School of Language, Literatures and Learning.
2022 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

In their book, Fairclough and Fairclough (2013) claim that political leaders’ main role is to make choices in difficult situations. Due to the coronavirus outbreak worldwide, every political leader was called to make difficult decisions and to announce them to their respective public. As a result, there is plenty of new data to be analyzed from a linguistic perspective. The goal of this study is to explore and analyze Boris Johnson’s ten first speeches on Covid-19 addressed to the nation between the 3rd and 23rd March 2020 (from herd immunity policy to strict lockdown). The corpus was examined in terms of lexicon structures (personal pronouns and verbs) and syntax structures (modal verbs), which, according to van Dijk (1997), are persuasive techniques. The findings suggest that the extensive use by Boris Johnson of the personal pronoun ‘we’ (exclusive) as well as the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ show his active involvement in the fight against Covid-19. This involvement is also corroborated through (a) his use of event verbs, which indicate a continuous action; and (b) his selection of modal verbs of obligation, which mostly follow the personal pronouns that refer to the Prime Minister and/or the decision makers. This paper concludes that syntax and lexicon structures were used in Boris Johnson’s speeches as tools of persuasive techniques.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
Boris Johnson, Covid-19, Lexicon Structures, Political Discourse Analysis, Syntax Structures
National Category
Specific Languages General Language Studies and Linguistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-41653OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-41653DiVA, id: diva2:1671677
Subject / course
English
Available from: 2022-06-17 Created: 2022-06-17

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf