Rhetorical and Persuasive Strategies Employed by Imran Khan in his Victory Speech: A Socio-Political Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to explore the rhetorical and persuasive strategies employed by a political leader to propagate his ideology using language. It intends to critically analyze the victory speech of Pakistani Premier Imran Khan (IK)—the Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)—which he delivered at the Prime Minister House, Islamabad, after being elected as the 22nd Premier of Pakistan in 2018. The researchers attempt to unveil and analyze critically the strategies that worked behind this speech to persuade the audience. Different linguistic tools used for projecting and achieving political power have been identified and scrutinized. The qualitative analysis of the speech is based on theory of Aristotle’s Rhetoric; Ethos, Pathos, Logos and other persuasive strategies like use of personal pronoun, predication strategy, and positive self-presentation and negative others-presentation employed by IK, and further to study how language carries the power of transforming the perception and political views of people. The findings suggest that political discourse is intentionally crafted to communicate and persuade people about specific ideologies located in the discourse in an implicit way and IK uses the Aristotelian rhetorical model comprising of rhetoric, predication strategy, and self-presentation and negative Others-presentation strategy to persuade his audience to follow his hidden agendas.