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9I Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2023 16(6): 884-894
EDN: KIMEFC УДК 811
Logos, Ethos and Pathos in Presidential Addresses to the Nation
Olga A. Boginskaya*
Irkutsk National Research Technical University Irkutsk, Russian Federation
Received 20.10.2022, received in revised form 25.12.2022, accepted 17.04.2023
Abstract. The present study investigates the role of discursive strategies in enhancing the persuasive power of the claims and justifying political decisions in presidential emergency addresses to the nation. Adopting Aristotle's persuasion theory, the present study aims to identify the frequency, types and functions of persuasive strategies used by the Russian President to convince the people - logos (reason), ethos (credibility) and pathos (emotion). Five emergency presidential addresses delivered by Putin were analyzed to achieve this aim. The data was explored using the statistical and interpretative methods. The study found that persuasive strategies are an integral part of the presidential addresses used to forge an effective relationship and convince the nation to accept decisions made by the President. The findings revealed that all three types of persuasive strategies - Logos, Pathos and Ethos - appeared in Putin's addresses with the priority of appeals to emotions (Pathos). The use of these strategies constitutes a crucial element of Putin's rhetoric and indicates the President's conceptualization of this type of discourse as being persuasive.
Keywords: persuasion, persuasive discourse, persuasive strategy, logos, ethos, pathos, presidential address.
Research area: theoretical, applied, comparative and contrastive linguistics.
Citation: Boginskaya O. A. Logos, ethos and pathos in presidential addresses to the nation. In: J. Sib. Fed. Univ. Humanit. soc. sci., 2023, 16(6), 884-894. EDN: KIMEFC
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
Логос, этос и пафос в обращениях президента к народу
О. А. Богинская
Иркутский национальный исследовательский технический университет Российская Федерация, Иркутск
Аннотация. В настоящей работе исследуется роль дискурсивных стратегий, использующихся в президентском дискурсе для увеличения персуазивной силы политических заявлений и обоснования необходимости политических мер. Основываясь на риторике Аристотеля, в работе определяется частотность и функции персуазивных стратегий в обращениях российского президента. Для достижения поставленной цели были проанализированы пять обращений президента, связанных с чрезвычайными ситуациями, возникшими в стране. Корпус текстов был исследован с использованием методов интерпретативного и статистического анализа. Результаты исследования показали, что стратегии убеждения являются неотъемлемой частью президентского дискурса, используются для установления эффективных отношений с гражданами и помогают заручиться их поддержкой. Выявлено, что все три вида персуазивных стратегий - логос, пафос и этос - регулярно используются в речах. Наиболее частотными оказались аффективные апелляции. Регулярное использование данных стратегий представляет собой важнейший элемент риторики Путина и указывает на то, что президент концептуализирует президентский дискурс как дискурс персуазивный.
Ключевые слова: убеждение, персуазивный дискурс, персуазивная стратегия, логос, этос, пафос, обращение президента.
Научная специальность: 5.9.8 — теоретическая, прикладная и сравнительно-сопоставительная лингвистика.
Цитирование: Богинская О. А. Логос, этос и пафос в обращениях президента к народу. Журн. Сиб. федер. ун-та. Гуманитарные науки, 2023, 16(6), 884—894. EDN: KIMEFC
Introduction
Political discourse has been comprehensively analyzed from a variety of angles. Research into discursive practices occurring on the political arena has involved analyses of rhetorical features and functions (Balashova, 2022; Missikova, 2007; Rosingana, 2018; Safonova, 2009; Sukma, 2017; van Dijk, 2002), including persuasion (Bartashova, Polyakova, 2018; Mai, 2016; Matveeva, Stepanova, 2021; Kashiha, 2022), genres (Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2008; Fetzer, Bull, 2013; Sheigal, 2002), critical discourse analysis (Luo, 2007; van Dijk, 2006, 2021; Wang, 2010), etc.
Despite this research is valuable, little empirical studies appear to have analyzed the rhetoric of Russian-language presidential addresses. The literature reviews found a large number studies that deal with rhetorical features of English-language presidential discourse. Hor-vath (2010), for example, adopted an intracul-tural approach to investigate the persuasive strategies in Obama's inaugural address and contrast them with those used by Bush. From the same intracultural perspective, Biria and Mohammadi (2012) explored rhetorical devices used to express political views in Bush and Obama's inaugural speeches. The researchers
revealed differences in the use and linguistic realization of discursive strategies aimed at refuting opposing views and offering concessions of points to the opposition. Mirzaeian (2020) adopted the same approach to explore the similarities and differences between Obama and Trump in terms of interpersonal metadiscourse markers used in their speeches on the Iran nuclear deal. In Capone's (2010) work, Obama's victory speech was studied from the perspective of pragmemes. The researcher found that the discourse strategy chosen by the US President is aimed to reverse the direction of influence from the people in control to the people controlled. Sukma (2017), who investigated interpersonal markers in Obama's campaign speeches, found that the American President made use of different types of metadiscourse categories (i.e., hedges, boosters, attributors, attitude markers, and commentaries). The high frequency of attitude markers and commentaries in Obama's speeches indicated an attempt to build an emotional relationship with the electorate. Obama's speeches were also explored by Kashiha (2022) who made an attempt to investigate their persuasive function. The results obtained indicated that the former US President relied more on interactional metadiscourse than on interactive, suggesting that involving an audience in arguments and showing evaluation towards propositions contribute to constructing a persuasive speech to a greater extent. The intercultural analysis by Rezaei and Nourali (2016) was aimed to compare the use of tropes as persuasive techniques in speeches by Rouhani, the Iranian president, and Obama, the US President. The study revealed culture-based differences in the use of persuasive techniques.
With this profusion of studies of English-language presidential discourse, only a small number of researchers deal with Russian-language addresses delivered by the President. Safonova's (2009), for example, explored the vectors of adaptation of political intentionality in the presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and revealed that the rhetorical and linguistic features of this genre can vary due to the employment of a set of communicative strategies, tactics, and linguistic items. Steksova analyzed presidential
discourse in order to compare the communicative features of the addresses delivered by the Kazakh President N. Nazarbayev and the Russian President D. Medvedev. Frolova (2020) has examined the presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly based on the genre components such as addressee, of addresser, communicative purpose, topic and linguistic items. Balashova (2022) carried out linguistic and cognitive analyses of the most regular and conceptually significant metaphors used in the addresses by the President of Russia to describe the epidemiological and social and economic situation in the country during the COVID-19 epidemic. She revealed that the President opts for linguistic, systemically organized transfers focusing his attention on the informative component of his speech. The voluntarily function is realized through the cognitive matrix of specific metaphorization models.
Given the small amount of research into Russian-language presidential addresses as a persuasive genre of political discourse and adopting Aristotle's persuasion theory, the present study aims to uncover the types of persuasive strategies used by the President to convince the Russian people to accept presidential policies. The analysis will, I hope, contribute to our understanding of the ways political leaders make rhetorical choices through the use of linguistic items.
Theoretical framework
The presidential address: types and rhetorical functions
Presidents deliver speeches intended to the people on crucial political events that precede or follow the address: inauguration, holidays, or emergencies. The purpose of the inaugural address, for example, is to appreciate and acknowledge the mandate of the people, to unite the nation, to rehearse the traditional values, to inform the people about their constitutional responsibilities, to put forth the agenda, to persuade that the President will overcome social and economic challenges, etc. Interestingly, the tradition of the inaugural address was established by George Washington in 1789 and is continued by almost all worlds leaders, including the Russian presidents.
In Russia, one more type of presidential address has gained popularity and become traditional - the New Year Address to the people. On December 31 the president gives the New Year speech from the Kremlin, summing up the main events of the ongoing year and discussing avenues for the coming one. In his speech the President attempts to strengthen the positive emotional state of the people and demonstrate a respectful attitude towards them. The Russian tradition of the New Year address dates back to 1941, when Kalinin, the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, delivered the first speech about the situation in the country during World War II. Later, in 1970, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev continued this tradition. It is worth noting, however, that Brezhnev's New Year addresses were more like annual reports than congratulations serving the informative rather than emotive purpose. His successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, abandoned the tradition, and only in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev revived it. However, in 1986-1988, these addresses were rather unusual: the Soviet President addressed the American nation, while the American one - the Soviet people, which intended to mark the end of the Cold War. Later, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin continued this tradition. Interestingly, he was the first Russian leader who touched upon family values rather than political issues in his speeches. The current Russian President Vladimir Putin has never missed his New Year addresses, in which he always talks about family values and national traditions and summarizes the main events of the ongoing year.
One more type of presidential speech delivered by the Russian President is the annual State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly. The Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly started by Boris Yeltsin in 1994 aims to outline the state of the national economy, key problems of the internal and foreign policies. It is given in front of the Parliament and contains two sections - internal policy and foreign policy. The address is intended to sum up the main achievements in these two areas and outline objectives for further development.
Presidential emergency addresses to the nation have become a common practice under Putin's presidency. The first Russian President Boris Yeltsin addressed the nation only on two occasions: on confidence in the President in 1992 and on the nationwide referendum in 1993. In modern Russia, examples of emergency addresses are more numerous: the address on the terrorist attacks in Beslan in 2004, the address on Pension Reform in 2018, the addresses on coronavirus in 2020, or the address on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
It is worth noting that all these types of presidential address serve different rhetorical functions: while the New Year address predominantly plays an affective role, the State of the Nation Addresses to the Federal Assembly is mainly informative, and the core purpose of emergency addresses is persuasive.
Emergency addresses selected for the current study are a way to directly communicate with the people and justify the measures taken in the light of the emergency situation. Through these addresses, the president informs the nation about his decisions and makes efforts to persuade the audience that these decisions are correct and the only possible ones. This kind of presidential address can be defined therefore as a discursive interaction "between the addresser and the addressee in which the addresser intends to support his/her propositions by persuading the addressee to accept his/her ideas and viewpoints" (Kashi-ha, 2022: 77). In achieving this goal, the president uses a variety of rhetorical features to interact with the people and control power relations. Persuasive strategies help the president in presenting his own visions and setting forth goals.
Persuasion as a key strategy of political discourse
As Burke (1969: 72) put it, "wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is meaning, there is persuasion". Politics is a decision-making process through the distribution of power in order to implement political, economic and social ideas. For political claims to be delivered, a variety of strategies are employed to persuade an audience.
R. Perloff conceptualizes persuasion as "a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behavior through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice" [Perloff, 2003: 34]. As van Dijk (1997) put it, persuasion is a procedure during which people tend to shift their viewpoints as an effect of a discourse and to make an audience change their opinions and implant the speaker's thoughts in their minds.
Persuasion is a key strategy of political discourse since its purpose is to buttress a maximum amount of proponents, draw the audience to a certain direction making adopt certain objectives by convincing that these objectives are valuable.
Following Aristotle's persuasion theory (1983) taken as a theatrical basis for the current study, three types of persuasive strategies can be distinguished: (1) Logos (reason) which involves changing audience' views through appeals to rational arguments; (2) Ethos (credibility) which involves changing audience' views through appeals to reliability, credibility, or expertise; (3) Pathos (emotion) which involves changing audience' views through appeals to the audience's emotions.
Data and methodology
For the purpose of the present study, transcripts of five Putin's emergency addresses to the nation were derived from the website www. kremlin.ru: the Beslan address, two Corona-virus addresses, the Crimea address, and the Ukraine address.
The www.kremlin.ru is the official website of the Russian President launched in January 2000. The website publishes all content issued by the Presidential Press Service, and transcripts of the presidential addresses can be found there.
President Putin's Beslan address was made on September 4, 2004, immediately following the terrorist act in a North Ossetia town. In his address, Putin admitted to the strategic failure to respond to the global challenges, promised justice and called for the mobilization of the nation. He assured that he as a Russia President would contribute to a new, stronger country
capable of standing up to the growing Islamic threat.
Putin's Crimean speech was delivered on 18 March 2014 in connection with the request for admission by the Crimean parliament in Russia. Putin emphasized that a referendum in Crimea had been held in compliance with democratic procedures and international law. He also claimed that in the heart of the Crimean people, Crimea had always been an integral part of Russia. Putin emphasized that Russia and Ukraine are one people, Russia would always defend interests of Ukraine.
Putin's coronavirus addresses to the nation delivered on March and April, 2020 were intended to declare the introduction and prolongation of the paid non-working days amid the spread of the coronavirus. In his address, Putin thanked all those who observed coronavirus prevention recommendations and expressed certainty that the Russian citizens would help medical workers in fighting this infectious disease. Putin emphasized that Russia managed to shield elderly people against the coronavirus and prevent the infection's spread in schools and universities. In a persuasive endeavor, Putin expressed his hope for defeating this enemy rapidly and with minimum losses.
The presidential address on Ukraine was delivered on February 24, 2022. This speech preceded the beginning of the military operation in Donbass and was addressed to the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. The address was intended to explain the Government's motivations for the military operation and convince the people of the need to start it. In achieving these persuasive goals, Putin claimed that there were fundamental threats for Russia and referred to the eastward expansion of NATO, which was moving its military infrastructure closer to the Russian border. In his speech, Putin announced the beginning of a special military operation emphasizing that it was the only way to protect the Russian people. In his address to the Ukrainian citizens, Putin described Russia's actions as self-defense against the threats created by NATO rather than an attempt to occupy the Ukrainian territory.
The transcripts of the presidential emergency addresses were downloaded from the
kremlin.ru website, converted to the Microsoft DOCS format and analyzed to identify persuasive strategies.
The analysis followed two stages: first, the transcripts were read and manually scanned in search of potential persuasive strategies. Every occurrence of a persuasive strategy was manually double checked in context to verify that it was serving the persuasion function. This was done by comparing every occurrence with the definition of persuasion provided by Diamond and Cobb (2005): "persuasion is a tool to change people's opinions, ideas, and views about something in particular". Once it was determined that a strategy qualified as persuasive, it was assigned to one of the types (Logos, Ethos or Pathos). Examples that did not match the definition of persuasion were excluded from the count. To ensure in-depth exploration into the use of persuasive strategies, examples were taken from the texts being studied and explanations were provided to describe the persuasion functions of strategies found in the presidential emergency addresses.
Findings
Quantitative results
The persuasive strategies found in the corpus are presented in the table below. The table summarizes the shares of persuasive strategies in the corpus.
The table shows that affective appeals (Pathos) were the most frequent in the corpus followed by rational ones with 31.1 %. The share of ethical appeals was smallest with 24.1 %.
Since the quantitative results do not fully explicate the ways in which Putin deploys the persuasive strategies, a detailed qualitative analysis is presented below.
Table. Frequency of occurrences of persuasive strategies in the corpus
Type of persuasive strategy %
Logos 31.1
Pathos 47.8
Ethos 21.1
Total 100
Ethos in Putin's addresses
In order for the speaker to convince an audience to accept certain views or decisions, it is necessary to make the audience respect the speaker, believe s/he is trustworthy and expert in the topic of speech. This element of persuasion is conceptualized as Ethos.
Appeals to credibility and reliability are regular in Putin's addresses since they help make people believe in his words, convince of his vision, gain credibility for his role in the country and present himself as a leader that upholds his promises, as illustrated in the following example:
(1) Я обещал, что власть будет вести открытую политику, будет объяснять гражданам свои цели и конкретные шаги. [I promised that the government bodies would pursue an open policy, explain their goals and specific measures to the citizens.]
Putin is geared toward establishing his own credibility emphasizing that he is able to keep promises made, particularly as promised he has implemented an open policy in the relations between the government and the citizens. This rhetorical strategy is often realized with the use of personal pronouns as can be seen in the above example.
Citation is another efficient tool of persuasion employed by the Russian President to create an image of a trustworthy persona:
(2) Я не люблю обращаться к цитатам, но всё-таки не могу удержаться, ещё одна выдержка из ещё одного официального документа ...: «Декларации о независимости могут, и часто так и происходит, нарушать внутреннее законодательство. Однако это не означает, что происходит нарушение международного права». [I don't like to use quotes, but I can't resist. One more excerpt from another official document...: "Declarations of independence can, and often do, violate domestic law. However, this does not mean that they violate international law."]
Putin's positioning as a credible speaker is realized through the citation of the UN Charter whose provisions confirm the Crimean people's right to declare their region independent.
One more type of appeal to Ethos in Putin's addresses comes in the form of expertise. Putin appeals to his knowledge of the current political situation thus demonstrating his proficiency.
(3) Знаю, что в этой связи есть серьезные вопросы и к федеральному Правительству, и к республиканской администрации. [I know that in this regard there are serious questions for both the federal and republican government.]
(4) Мы знаем об этом и объективно оцениваем постоянно звучащие в наш адрес угрозы в сфере экономики -так же, как и свои возможности противостоять этому наглому и перманентному шантажу. [We are aware of this and objectively assess the threats to us in the economic area and our ability to resist this impudent and permanent blackmail.]
As illustrated below, Putin resorts to the knowledge of Russian history to foster his Ethos.
(5) Мы хорошо знаем из истории, как в 40-м году и в начале 41-го года прошлого века Советский Союз всячески стремился предотвратить или хотя бы оттянуть начало войны. [We know well from history how in the 1940th and at the beginning of 1941 the Soviet Union tried to prevent or at least delay the outbreak of the war.]
Putin refers to the history of World War II bringing to mind that the Soviet Union sought to prevent it.
In the following examples, Putin demonstrates his political efficiency and stresses political powers, which is also a marker of Ethos:
(6) Нам в целом пока удаётся оградить от серьёзной угрозы людей старших поколений, не допустить вспышки эпидемии в детских садах и школах, вузах, других учебных заведениях. [On the whole, we have managed to protect older people from a serious threat, to prevent an outbreak of the epidemic in kindergartens and schools, universities, and other educational institutions.]
(7) Поэтому поручил своим полномочным представителям в федеральных округах плотно координировать работу регионов. [Therefore, I instructed my authorized representatives in the federal districts to coordinate the work in the regions.]
Expressing goodwill is one more type of ethical appeal that Putin relies on. In the example below, the President thanks the Russian people for their patriotic attitude:
(8) Я хочу поблагодарить всех за этот патриотический настрой. Всех без исключения. [I want to thank everyone for this patriotic spirit. Everyone without exception.]
Giving thanks, Putin emphasizes the important role of the people in assisting him to pursue his political goals, uniting himself and the audience to be one nation facing the same threats.
Below is an example of expressing gratitude to the Ukrainian military persons who supported the decision made by the Crimean citizens:
(9) И в этой связи я хочу поблагодарить украинских военнослужащих, а это немалый контингент - 22 тысяч человек с полным вооружением. Я хочу поблагодарить тех военнослужащих Украины, которые не пошли на кровопролитие и не запятнали себя кровью. [And in this regard, I want to thank the Ukrainian military, and this is a considerable contingent - 22 thousand armed
people. I want to thank those servicemen of Ukraine who have not gone to the bloodshed and have not stained themselves with blood.]
The gratitude increases Putin's credibility to act in a socially responsible way by recognizing contributions made by other people.
Thus, the analysis revealed three types of ethical appeal in Putin's addresses: reliability appeals, expertise appeals, and goodwill appeals.
Logos in Putin's addresses
Logos refers to the clarity of the claims presented and emphasizes the appeal to reason. Considering the process of persuasion in terms of Aristotle's theory, the appeals to rational arguments might imply that logos increases the power of ethos, since the presentation of rational argument makes the speaker seem more reliable and credible. This persuasive strategy is based on the tools that help to persuade the people through the introduction of examples and facts. Here is an example of the persuasive fact-based claim:
(10) Кстати, сегодня из 2 миллионов 200 тысяч жителей Крымского полуострова - почти полтора миллиона русских, 350 тысяч украинцев, которые преимущественно считают русский язык своим родным языком, и порядка 290-300 тысяч крымских татар. By the way, today, out of 2 million 200 thousand inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula, there are almost one and a half million Russians, 350 thousand Ukrainians who predominantly consider Russian as their mother tongue, and about 290-300 thousand Crimean Tatars.
The impact on the rational sphere of the addressee's consciousness is carried out by providing facts about the role of the Russian language in Crimea. In the following example, the logical argument is based on statistical data which is very helpful in the efforts made by politicians to convince the audience to accept their views.
(11) Вы знаете, последние социологические опросы, которые были проведены в России буквально на днях: порядка 95 процентов граждан считают, что Россия должна защищать интересы русских и представителей других национальностей, проживающих в Крыму. [You know, the latest sociological polls that were conducted in Russia just the other day: about 95 percent of citizens believe that Russia should protect the interests of Russians and representatives of other nationalities living in Crimea.]
The appeal to the objective state of affairs realized through the use of statistical data enhances the impact of Putin's arguments and the perlocutionary effect of persuasive claims.
Examples are one more logical tools used by Putin to persuade the audience. The President provides illustrative examples to confirm his claims.
(12) Например, ещё в период «холодной войны» США, а затем и другие страны запретили продавать в СССР большой перечень технологий и оборудования. [For example, during the Cold War, the United States and then other countries banned the sale of a large number of technologies and equipment to the USSR.]
(13) За примерами далеко ходить не нужно. Сперва без всякой санкции Совета Безопасности ООН провели кровопролитную военную операцию против Белграда, использовали авиацию, ракеты прямо в самом центре Европы. [You don't have to look far for examples. First, without any sanction from the UN Security Council, they carried out a bloody military operation against Belgrade, using aircraft and missiles right in the very center of Europe.]
To produce persuasive discourse, Putin resorts to a rather large number examples that strengthen his logical arguments. Particularly, with a view to describing the danger the USA bring to Russia, he mentions their sanctions
imposed on Russian technology and equipment and the bloody military operation in Serbia.
Thus, the corpus-based analysis identified two types of rational appeals in Putin's addresses - fact-based appeals and example-based appeals.
Pathos in Putin's addresses
Finally, one more persuasive strategy most frequently used by Putin in his addresses and relating to his attempts of touching the emotions of the people is Pathos that puts "the audience into a certain frame of mind" (Demirdogen, 2010: 190), refers to audience's feelings and triggers emotions, which is achieved through the identification, whereby the speaker pretends to understand the needs and values of the addressee. Here are two examples from the corpus.
(14) Вообще складывается впечатление, что практически везде, во многих регионах мира, куда Запад приходит устанавливать свой порядок, по итогам остаются кровавые, незаживающие раны, язвы международного терроризма и экстремизма. [In general, one can think that almost everywhere, in many regions, where the West has established its own order, bloody, non-healing wounds, ulcers of international terrorism and extremism remain.]
(15) Это реальная угроза не просто нашим интересам, а самому существованию нашего государства, его суверенитету. [This is a real threat not just to our interests, but to the very existence of our country, its sovereignty.]
Putin tries to convey negative feelings such as fear to persuade the people of the need to launch a special military operation in Ukraine. The appeals to emotions of the addressee seem to be the most effective persuasive tool which can enhance the illocutionary force of claims. Strengthening the persuasive effect of his claims, Putin refers to a shared value - security - which helps him buttress the popular support. Below is an example of the
persuasive claim in which Putin appeals to the negative feeling of the Russian people associated with Bandera's actions in Ukraine:
(16) Повторю, он будет, как и было веками, родным домом для представителей всех живущих там народов. Но он никогда не будет бандеровским! [I say it once more. It will be, as it has been for centuries, a home for representatives of all the peoples living there. But he will never be Bandera's!]
This appeal is also very productive, since most Russian people know about cruelty of the Nazi collaborator and have a hatred for him. It facilitates acceptance of Putin's decision to launch a military operation intended to destroy the Nazism in Ukraine.
The emotional appeals to the negative feelings are often reinforced by the appeals to the positive ones, as illustrated in the following example:
(17) Крым - это наше общее достояние и важнейший фактор стабильности в регионе. [Crimea is our common heritage and the most important factor of stability in the region.]
Pathos of Putin's speech is positive here, since he arouses feelings of love, proudness and unity of two peoples by telling them that they are one people, and the Crimea is their common heritage.
The analysis showed that affective appeals in Putin's addresses were of two types: appeals to positive feelings and appeals to negative feelings with the prevalence of the latter.
Conclusion
Politicians use language to convince people thus achieving certain political goals. The primary aim of persuasive discourse is to influence the behavior of an audience through a combination of rational, affective and ethical appeals in order to convince them to believe or act as the speaker wants them to do.
The study revealed that persuasive strategies play a vital role in gaining ratification for
presidential decisions from the people by helping to present claims with strong commitment and certainty and a high degree of affectivity, and the Russian President makes extensive use of these rhetorical strategies in his emergency addresses to the nation. These strategies are among the many other devices the president could have selected, and their presence suggests that they are meaningful in buttressing popular support.
The quantitative analysis revealed that Pathos (emotion) was the most frequent persuasive strategy accounting for about 49 % of the total number of persuasive strategies identified in Putin's addresses. Ethos (credibility) with about 21 % was the least common persuasive tool in the corpus. From a discourse perspec-
References
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One of the most important implications of this research is that the concept of persuasion opens a new area for research in the study of presidential discourse. The findings provide a strong argument for exploring persuasion as a crucial component of political discourse. I suggest that further research be conducted to investigate this area either by extending the methodology or examining other taxonomies of persuasive strategies used by presidents to interact with the people. Further studies could offer more insight into persuasion from a cross-cultural or diachronic perspective.
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