Pathos Configuration in the War Crisis Context

Abstract

The paper deals, in broad terms, with the discursive functioning of emotions; it proposes a case study: the analysis of the pathemic configuration of the speech delivered by president Zelensky in the joint meeting of the US Congress, on March 16th 2022, within a war crisis context, intrinsically affectively marked. The analysis is set within a rhetorical-argumentative framework, considering the discursive appeal to emotions as a form of “subjective rationality” (Charaudeau 2000), and it aims to highlight the strategic, emotive structuring of the discourse, by means of various intertwining mechanisms of emotional elicitation, with constant reference to the audience’s endoxical profile. As pointed out by the analysis, certain types of (implicit) emotions (sharing a highly active-motivational dimension) are particularly appealed to: basic intensive emotions, such as anger or fear and, especially, sociomoral (both euphoric and dysphoric) emotions, such as pity/compassion, (national) pride, gratitude, admiration, or shame/guilt. Their presence in the speech demarcates a discursive scenario, which supports its main persuasive goal: to obtain the audience’s adhesion to the speaker’s viewpoint, as well as to mobilize a future concrete extra-discursive (re)action.