Just War: Critical Discourse Analysis of US Presidential Speeches

Abstract

War discourse plays an important role in the current political and media agenda. This CDA-based study aimed at identifying how the nature of conflict affects the discursive practices used for conflict representation. The concept of war discourse was thoroughly described in view of a just war tradition. Two contexts of extensively covered conflicts were chosen for investigation, namely the American-led intervention in the Syrian civil war and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. These military conflicts that seem different at first sight were mediated by direct and indirect US involvement. The research data were drawn from two US Presidents’ speeches and examined through CDA (van Dijk 1993, 2005), relating language use to its social, political and historical context. The analysis revealed a number of identical war discourse elements, their linguistic and extralinguistic (historical and cultural) peculiarities. These elements include a) the US conflict management strategies, b) negative other-presentation, c) positive self-presentation, d) a historical context of the US participation in similar conflicts, and e) a call to action. Combined together, these elements form a typical pattern, which can be used for both text analysis and text production.