Chapter 4. Maintaining political authority and credibility during the Covid-19 crisis

Abstract

This article explores how communicative influence is instantiated through the analysis of situational settings, pragmatic means, and discursive strategies at the press conferences held by the Czech government during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis to maintain political authority and credibility. The analysis is informed by the rhetorical approach used in crisis communication studies and follows the tenets of corpus-assisted discourse studies (Taylor and Marchi 2018). It combines quantitative insights with qualitative close reading. The results point to the fact that the building and maintenance of authority and credibility is achieved by a positive depiction of one’s crisis management performance and by intensive blame management. In addition, there is a tendency towards strategic overcommunication which can hinder the understanding and critical scrutiny on the part of the audience.