The president’s speech: An analysis of Covid-19 discourse in the Iranian president’s speeches
Subject Areas : Communication
1 - University of Tehran
Keywords: Covid-19, discourse analysis, Iran, coronavirus,
Abstract :
This paper investigates the Covid-19 discourse which has taken shape in Haasan Rouhani’s speeches. Following Laclau and Mouffe theory of discourse analysis, we investigated all of Rouhani’s speeches (i.e. 30 speeches) from February 2, 2020 to April 27, 2020. Findings showed that Covid-19 discourse has mainly revolved around three nodal points: the country, enemy, and the state of exception. Our results also explained how Rouhani used Covid-19 as an empty signifier to reinforce the hegemonic discourse in Iran while trying to redefine his relations with the state-leaning organizations. While a growing body of research has already emerged from medical disciplines, this study contributes to our understanding of the novel coronavirus from a discursive perspective. This paper investigates the Covid-19 discourse which has taken shape in Haasan Rouhani’s speeches. Following Laclau and Mouffe theory of discourse analysis, we investigated all of Rouhani’s speeches (i.e. 30 speeches) from February 2, 2020 to April 27, 2020. Findings showed that Covid-19 discourse has mainly revolved around three nodal points: the country, enemy, and the state of exception. Our results also explained how Rouhani used Covid-19 as an empty signifier to reinforce the hegemonic discourse in Iran while trying to redefine his relations with the state-leaning organizations. While a growing body of research has already emerged from medical disciplines, this study contributes to our understanding of the novel coronavirus from a discursive perspective.
انصاریان، شادی؛ داوری اردکانی، نگار. و بامشادی، پارسا. (1398). "واکاوی سخنرانی حسن روحانی در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل متحد در سال 1396 با رویکرد تحلیل گفتمان پل جی"، فصلنامه زبان‌شناسی اجتماعی، دوره 2، شماره 6، صص. 69-83
جهانگیری، جهانگیر. و فتاحی، سجاد. (1390). "تحلیل گفتمان محمود احمدی‌نژاد در انتخابات ریاست جمهوری دور دهم"، مطالعات اجتماعی ایران، سال پنجم، شماره 3 (پیاپی 15).
قائد رحمتی، صفر. (1398). "تحلیل گفتمان انتقادی فرکلاف؛ تفسیر متون تولید شده رسانه‌ای وضعیت گردشگری پساکرونای ایران"، پژوهش گردشگری، دوره 2، شماره 1، صص. 1-11.
کیوانی، کیواندخت. (1391). "تحلیل گفتمان سخنرانی‌های محمود احمدی‌نژاد رئیس جمهور ایران در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل طی سال‌های 1387، 1388 و 1389 با رویکرد دیپلماسی عمومی"، پایان‌نامه کارشناسی‌ارشد.
یل شرزه، رضا. و منصفی، رویا. (1399 الف). "بررسی چگونگی مواجهه گفتمانی وزارت بهداشت ایران با شیوع ویروس کرونا به مدد مدل تحلیل گفتمان فرکلاف (1989)"، پژوهش‌های زبان‌شناسی، دوره 12، شماره 1، صص. 153-176.
یل شرزه، رضا. و منصفی، رویا. (1399 ب). "بیماری «کووید-19» یا «ویروس چینی»؟ تحلیل انتقادی گفتمان برتری جویانه غرب علیه شرق"، زبان پژوهی، پذیرفته شده انتشار آنلاین از تاریخ 23 مهر 1399.
Agamben, G. (2005). “State of exception”, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Alemi, M., Tajeddin, Z. & Rajabi Kondlaji, A. (2018). “A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Two Iranian Presidents’ Speeches at the UN General Assembly”, International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, Vol. 6(1), PP. 1-17.
Allen, N., Bara, J. & Bartle, J. (2013). “Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime Ministerial Debates”, Political Studies, Vol. 61(l), PP. 92-113. doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12012.
Bush, R. (2012). “Rhetoric, Psychoanalysis, and The Imaginary”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 26(2-3), PP. 282-298. doi: 10.1080/09502386.2011.644115.
Carreon, J.R. & Svetanant, C. (2017). “What lies underneath a political speech?: Critical discourse analysis of Thai PM’s political speeches aired on the TV programme returning happiness to the people”, Open Linguistics, Vol. 3(1), PP. 638-655. doi: 10.1515/opli-2017-0032.
Chung Joo, Chung. & Han Woo, Park. (2010). “Textual analysis of a political message: the inaugural addresses of two Korean presidents”, Social Science Information, Vol. 49(2), PP. 215-239. doi: 10.1177/0539018409359370.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation summary (2020). Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html.
Daghrir, D.W. (2013). “Binary Discourse in U.S. Presidential Speeches from FDR to Bush II”, IOSR Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 5(2), PP. 25-36. doi: 10.9790/4861-0522536.
DeLuca, K. (1999). “Articulation Theory: A Discursive Grounding for Rhetorical Practice”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 32(4), PP. 334-348. doi: Article.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1997). “What is Political Discourse Analysis?”, Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 11, PP. 11-52. doi: 10.1075/bjl.11.03dij.
Everett, J.A. & et al. (2020). “The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic”, PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/9yqs8.
Finlayson, A. (2012). “Rhetoric and the Political Theory of Ideologies”, Political Studies, Vol. 60(4), PP. 751-767. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00948.x.
Foucault, M. (1965). “Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2010). “Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language”, New York: Vintage Books.
Frischlich, L. (2020). “Differential Susceptibility for Distorted Information during the COVID-19 pandemic”, Available at: https://wprn.org/item/423752.
Golkar, S. (2012). “Cultural Engineering Under Authoritarian Regimes: Islamization of Universities in Postrevolutionary Irandome_124”, Digest of Middle East Studies, Vol. 21(1), PP. 1-23.
Goupy, M. (2018). “The state of exception theory of Carl Schmitt and the ambivalent criticism of liberalism”, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Vol. 28(4), PP. 395-408. doi: 10.1007/s41358-018-0142-3.
Hughes, C. (2019). “The god card: Strategic employment of religious language in U.S. presidential discourse”, International Journal of Communication, Vol. 13, PP. 528-549.
Kachanoff, F. & et al. (2020). “Measuring Two Distinct Psychological Threats of COVID-19 and their Unique Impacts on Wellbeing and Adherence to Public Health Behaviors”, Chapel Hill.
Karimi, M. (2018). “The Iranian Green Movement of 2009: Reverberating Echoes of Resistance”, New York: Lexington Books.
Khilnani, A., Schulz, J. & Robinson, L. (2020). “The COVID-19 pandemic: new concerns and connections between eHealth and digital inequalities”, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, ahead-of-p(ahead-of-print). doi: 10.1108/JICES-04-2020-0052.
KhosraviNik, M. (2015). “Discourse, Identity and Legitimacy”, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture). doi: 10.1075/dapsac.62.
Laclau, E. (2003). “Why do empty signifiers matter to politicians?”, in Zizek, S. (ed.) Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, PP. 305-314.
Laclau, E. (2008). “Articulation and the Limits of Metaphor”, in Joseph Bono, J., Dean, T., and Plonowska Ziarek, E. (eds) A Time for Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, PP. 61-83.
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (1985). “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics”, in Verso.
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (2001). “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics”, London: Verso.
Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J. & Bracken, C.C. (2002). “Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 28(4), PP. 587-604. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00826.x.
Masoudi, H. (2019). “Metaphorical incarnations of the “other” and Iranian International Relations discourses”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 25(3), PP. 748-771. doi: 10.1177/1354066119828184.
Mehring, R. (2017). “Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction today”, Filozofija i drustvo, Vol. 28(2), PP. 304-317. doi: 10.2298/FID1702304M.
Michael, Kaplan. (2010). “The Rhetoric of Hegemony: Laclau, Radical Democracy, and the Rule of Tropes”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 43(3), PP. 253-283. doi: 10.1353/par.0.0061.
آمار رسمی کرونا در ایران (2020). بی بی سی فارسی:
https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-52467458 (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Peters, M.A. & Besley, T.A.C. (2014). “Social Exclusion/Inclusion: Foucault’s analytics of exclusion, the political ecology of social inclusion and the legitimation of inclusive education”, Open Review of Educational Research, Vol. 1(1), PP. 99-115. doi: 10.1080/23265507.2014.972439.
Randour, F., Perrez, J. & Reuchamps, M. (2020). “Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research”, Discourse & Society, P. 095792652090352. doi: 10.1177/ 0957926520903526.
Rear, D. & Jones, A. (2013). “Discursive struggle and contested signifiers in the arenas of education policy and work skills in Japan”, Critical Policy Studies, Vol. 7(4), PP. 375-394. doi: 10.1080/19460171.2013.843469.
Saldaña, J. (2015). “The coding manual for qualitative researchers”, London: SAGE.
Sullivan, J. & Sapir, E.V. (2012). “Ma Ying-jeou’s Presidential Discourse”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Vol. 41(3), PP. 33-68.
Symon, G. (2008). “Developing the Political Perspective on Technological Change Through Rhetorical Analysis”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 22(1), PP. 74-98. doi: 10.1177/0893318908318514.
Takal, G.M. (2018). “Critical Discourse Analysis of President Hamid Karzai"s Speech”, International Journal of Science and Research, Vol. 8(9), PP. 924-932. doi: 10.21275/ART20201245.
Thomassen, L. (2016). “Hegemony, populism and democracy: Laclau and Mouffe today (review article)”, Revista Espanola de Ciencia Politica, Vol. 1(40), PP. 161-176.
Willig, C. (2014). “Discourses and Discourse Analysis”, in Flick, U. (ed.) SAGE Handbook of Analyzing Qualitative Data. London: SAGE Publications.
Xie, B. et al. (2020). “Global health crises are also information crises: A call to action”, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, P. asi. 24357. doi: 10.1002/asi.24357.
Young, R. (1981). “Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader”, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
_||_انصاریان، شادی؛ داوری اردکانی، نگار. و بامشادی، پارسا. (1398). "واکاوی سخنرانی حسن روحانی در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل متحد در سال 1396 با رویکرد تحلیل گفتمان پل جی"، فصلنامه زبان‌شناسی اجتماعی، دوره 2، شماره 6، صص. 69-83
جهانگیری، جهانگیر. و فتاحی، سجاد. (1390). "تحلیل گفتمان محمود احمدی‌نژاد در انتخابات ریاست جمهوری دور دهم"، مطالعات اجتماعی ایران، سال پنجم، شماره 3 (پیاپی 15).
قائد رحمتی، صفر. (1398). "تحلیل گفتمان انتقادی فرکلاف؛ تفسیر متون تولید شده رسانه‌ای وضعیت گردشگری پساکرونای ایران"، پژوهش گردشگری، دوره 2، شماره 1، صص. 1-11.
کیوانی، کیواندخت. (1391). "تحلیل گفتمان سخنرانی‌های محمود احمدی‌نژاد رئیس جمهور ایران در مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل طی سال‌های 1387، 1388 و 1389 با رویکرد دیپلماسی عمومی"، پایان‌نامه کارشناسی‌ارشد.
یل شرزه، رضا. و منصفی، رویا. (1399 الف). "بررسی چگونگی مواجهه گفتمانی وزارت بهداشت ایران با شیوع ویروس کرونا به مدد مدل تحلیل گفتمان فرکلاف (1989)"، پژوهش‌های زبان‌شناسی، دوره 12، شماره 1، صص. 153-176.
یل شرزه، رضا. و منصفی، رویا. (1399 ب). "بیماری «کووید-19» یا «ویروس چینی»؟ تحلیل انتقادی گفتمان برتری جویانه غرب علیه شرق"، زبان پژوهی، پذیرفته شده انتشار آنلاین از تاریخ 23 مهر 1399.
Agamben, G. (2005). “State of exception”, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Alemi, M., Tajeddin, Z. & Rajabi Kondlaji, A. (2018). “A Discourse-Historical Analysis of Two Iranian Presidents’ Speeches at the UN General Assembly”, International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, Vol. 6(1), PP. 1-17.
Allen, N., Bara, J. & Bartle, J. (2013). “Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime Ministerial Debates”, Political Studies, Vol. 61(l), PP. 92-113. doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12012.
Bush, R. (2012). “Rhetoric, Psychoanalysis, and The Imaginary”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 26(2-3), PP. 282-298. doi: 10.1080/09502386.2011.644115.
Carreon, J.R. & Svetanant, C. (2017). “What lies underneath a political speech?: Critical discourse analysis of Thai PM’s political speeches aired on the TV programme returning happiness to the people”, Open Linguistics, Vol. 3(1), PP. 638-655. doi: 10.1515/opli-2017-0032.
Chung Joo, Chung. & Han Woo, Park. (2010). “Textual analysis of a political message: the inaugural addresses of two Korean presidents”, Social Science Information, Vol. 49(2), PP. 215-239. doi: 10.1177/0539018409359370.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation summary (2020). Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html.
Daghrir, D.W. (2013). “Binary Discourse in U.S. Presidential Speeches from FDR to Bush II”, IOSR Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 5(2), PP. 25-36. doi: 10.9790/4861-0522536.
DeLuca, K. (1999). “Articulation Theory: A Discursive Grounding for Rhetorical Practice”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 32(4), PP. 334-348. doi: Article.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1997). “What is Political Discourse Analysis?”, Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 11, PP. 11-52. doi: 10.1075/bjl.11.03dij.
Everett, J.A. & et al. (2020). “The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic”, PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/9yqs8.
Finlayson, A. (2012). “Rhetoric and the Political Theory of Ideologies”, Political Studies, Vol. 60(4), PP. 751-767. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00948.x.
Foucault, M. (1965). “Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2010). “Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language”, New York: Vintage Books.
Frischlich, L. (2020). “Differential Susceptibility for Distorted Information during the COVID-19 pandemic”, Available at: https://wprn.org/item/423752.
Golkar, S. (2012). “Cultural Engineering Under Authoritarian Regimes: Islamization of Universities in Postrevolutionary Irandome_124”, Digest of Middle East Studies, Vol. 21(1), PP. 1-23.
Goupy, M. (2018). “The state of exception theory of Carl Schmitt and the ambivalent criticism of liberalism”, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Vol. 28(4), PP. 395-408. doi: 10.1007/s41358-018-0142-3.
Hughes, C. (2019). “The god card: Strategic employment of religious language in U.S. presidential discourse”, International Journal of Communication, Vol. 13, PP. 528-549.
Kachanoff, F. & et al. (2020). “Measuring Two Distinct Psychological Threats of COVID-19 and their Unique Impacts on Wellbeing and Adherence to Public Health Behaviors”, Chapel Hill.
Karimi, M. (2018). “The Iranian Green Movement of 2009: Reverberating Echoes of Resistance”, New York: Lexington Books.
Khilnani, A., Schulz, J. & Robinson, L. (2020). “The COVID-19 pandemic: new concerns and connections between eHealth and digital inequalities”, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, ahead-of-p(ahead-of-print). doi: 10.1108/JICES-04-2020-0052.
KhosraviNik, M. (2015). “Discourse, Identity and Legitimacy”, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture). doi: 10.1075/dapsac.62.
Laclau, E. (2003). “Why do empty signifiers matter to politicians?”, in Zizek, S. (ed.) Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, PP. 305-314.
Laclau, E. (2008). “Articulation and the Limits of Metaphor”, in Joseph Bono, J., Dean, T., and Plonowska Ziarek, E. (eds) A Time for Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, PP. 61-83.
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (1985). “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics”, in Verso.
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (2001). “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics”, London: Verso.
Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J. & Bracken, C.C. (2002). “Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 28(4), PP. 587-604. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00826.x.
Masoudi, H. (2019). “Metaphorical incarnations of the “other” and Iranian International Relations discourses”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 25(3), PP. 748-771. doi: 10.1177/1354066119828184.
Mehring, R. (2017). “Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction today”, Filozofija i drustvo, Vol. 28(2), PP. 304-317. doi: 10.2298/FID1702304M.
Michael, Kaplan. (2010). “The Rhetoric of Hegemony: Laclau, Radical Democracy, and the Rule of Tropes”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 43(3), PP. 253-283. doi: 10.1353/par.0.0061.
آمار رسمی کرونا در ایران (2020). بی بی سی فارسی:
https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-52467458 (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Peters, M.A. & Besley, T.A.C. (2014). “Social Exclusion/Inclusion: Foucault’s analytics of exclusion, the political ecology of social inclusion and the legitimation of inclusive education”, Open Review of Educational Research, Vol. 1(1), PP. 99-115. doi: 10.1080/23265507.2014.972439.
Randour, F., Perrez, J. & Reuchamps, M. (2020). “Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research”, Discourse & Society, P. 095792652090352. doi: 10.1177/ 0957926520903526.
Rear, D. & Jones, A. (2013). “Discursive struggle and contested signifiers in the arenas of education policy and work skills in Japan”, Critical Policy Studies, Vol. 7(4), PP. 375-394. doi: 10.1080/19460171.2013.843469.
Saldaña, J. (2015). “The coding manual for qualitative researchers”, London: SAGE.
Sullivan, J. & Sapir, E.V. (2012). “Ma Ying-jeou’s Presidential Discourse”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Vol. 41(3), PP. 33-68.
Symon, G. (2008). “Developing the Political Perspective on Technological Change Through Rhetorical Analysis”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 22(1), PP. 74-98. doi: 10.1177/0893318908318514.
Takal, G.M. (2018). “Critical Discourse Analysis of President Hamid Karzai"s Speech”, International Journal of Science and Research, Vol. 8(9), PP. 924-932. doi: 10.21275/ART20201245.
Thomassen, L. (2016). “Hegemony, populism and democracy: Laclau and Mouffe today (review article)”, Revista Espanola de Ciencia Politica, Vol. 1(40), PP. 161-176.
Willig, C. (2014). “Discourses and Discourse Analysis”, in Flick, U. (ed.) SAGE Handbook of Analyzing Qualitative Data. London: SAGE Publications.
Xie, B. et al. (2020). “Global health crises are also information crises: A call to action”, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, P. asi. 24357. doi: 10.1002/asi.24357.
Young, R. (1981). “Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader”, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
