All just empty words/ leere Worte/ празни приказки/ boş laf? A cross-linguistic analysis of the New Year’s addresses of Rumen Radev, Alexander van der Bellen and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the language used in the New Year’s addresses of the presidents of Bulgaria, Austria and Türkiye and describe the major differences in terms of topics and expressions used. The cross-linguistic critical analysis attempts to reveal both how the political background of the presidents is reflected in their speeches and how the different scope of powers these presidents possess influences the choice of topics and their linguistic means of expression. The presidents of Bulgaria, Austria and Türkiye come from different political traditions, namely the socialist tradition, the environmental movement and the Islamic-conservative tradition. True to historically close relations with Russia, Radev avoids taking sides when talking about the Russia-Ukrainian war. A former speaker of the Austrian Green Party, van der Bellen is the only one of the three presidents who mentions the climate crisis as one of the major challenges of the future. And only AKP’s leader Erdoğan resorts to constructing fears and referring to God’s help he is hoping to receive. While Radev and van der Bellen position themselves as observers of political and social life, Erdoğan primarily focuses on the achievements of his party. In terms of field of action, the speeches of Radev and van der Bellen can be determined as belonging to ‘Formation of public attitudes, opinions and will’. In Erdoğan’s speech, we find elements from ‘Formation of public attitudes, opinions and will’, ‘Political advertising’ and ‘Political executive and administration’.