»Dieser Fehler ist einzig und allein mein Fehler« – Political Communication in the Sign of the Corona Pandemic

Abstract

In the current COVID pandemic, the communication by political actors addressing the public is an important means to justify and legitimize political decisions. This contribution examines political communication aimed at the public at the example of addresses and government declarations by Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel during March 2020 and March 2021. When occasion and the intended goal of the actors’ speeches are same, clear differences become visible in the concrete linguistic realization of the addresses and government declarations, yet also similarities can be seen. The contribution focuses particularly on the argumentative structure, speech acts and associated practices of positioning and addressing as well as communicative strategies in order to elaborate both similarities and differences between the speeches.