THE LANGUAGE OF WAR: CORPUS ANALYSIS OF JOE BIDEN AND DONALD TRUMP'S SPEECHES ON UKRAINE

Abstract

This article presents the lexis used in Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s speeches on Ukraine through corpus analysis conducted with the Voyant Tools software, which enables multilevel text analysis, including word-frequency and collocation analysis as well as the generation of word clouds and trend visualizations, and reveals the evolution of their rhetorical strategies. The paper is aimed to define the lexical features and the frequency of use of lexical items in the speeches of President Biden and President Trump on the war in Ukraine. Additionally, this research aims to understand how their linguistic choices influence public perception of the Russian invasion and to what extent these linguistic choices shape political reactions. This research looks at 8 speeches by President Biden (4,748 words total) and 13 speeches by President Trump (4,971 words total) in that they reflect American views on the events. The corpus is subdivided into two sub-corpora: the speeches delivered by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively. However, the Trump sub-corpus is further divided into two sections: speeches delivered prior to becoming president, and addresses following his election and inauguration. Additionally, a "Twitter" sub-corpus consisting of four online statements was compiled and analysed. The results indicate that President Biden predominantly mentioned "Ukraine", "people", and "freedom" in his speeches. Alternatively, President Trump’s most-used words are "Ukraine", "war", and "Russia". These findings suggest differing rhetorical and narrative strategies used by the two leaders when addressing the conflict.