“UKRAINE IS STILL INDEPENDENT AND FREE”: ANALYSIS OF JOSEPH BIDEN’S SPEECHES ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The research aims to study the linguistic and functional features of Joseph Biden’s political discourse on the Ukrainian-Russian war. The publication’s relevance is caused by the need to examine the peculiarities of using the system of expressive means and stylistic devices in modern political discourse. The primary purpose is to analyze the means that contribute to the formation of emotional and psychological impact on the audience and determine their role in the political context. The object of the study is the public speeches of politicians as a linguistic and cultural phenomenon and an integral part of the English-speaking linguistic and cultural space. The subject of the study is the linguistic and stylistic features of Joseph Biden’s political speeches on the war in Ukraine. The corpus of eight speeches by the 46th President of the United States is used in the study. To achieve this goal, we used the method of simple data counting, the technique of discourse analysis, the process of stylistic analysis, the method of continuous sampling, and the comparative method. We also used the Voyant Tools corpus research tool. The results showed the frequency of key lexical items such as Ukraine, world, and people. Joseph Biden uses a variety of stylistic devices to achieve the desired effect, which is determined by the pragmatic characteristics of the speech and the specifics of the audience to which the speech is delivered. The analysis of stylistic devices demonstrated the frequent use of metaphors, euphemisms, epithets, and stylistic inversion, which make the speeches emotional and persuasive. Using various combinations of personal and possessive pronouns to denote the parties to political interaction adds to the persuasiveness of the US President’s speeches. Having analyzed Joseph Biden’s political speeches on the Russian-Ukrainian war, we conclude that linguistic and stylistic features contribute to the transmission of key ideas and the formation of a positive image of a political leader who stands for democratic values and support for Ukraine. Further research is needed on the peculiarities of reproducing the functional features of linguistic and stylistic means in translating Joseph Biden’s speeches into Ukrainian.