Doing a critical reading of a political speech means looking at the speech's setting, its goal, the language and rhetoric used, the audience, and the speaker's body language. The current study aims to analyze qualitatively through the use of the Aristotelian Rhetoric model the political de-escalation speeches of Iraqi politicians from a critical and persuasive discourse analysis perspective. It has been noticed that Iraqi politicians highly use persuasive discourse to influence public opinion and to promote their political agenda. Based on this, the study assumes the existence of different persuasive strategies in this specific genre. The data analyzed consists of three speech delivered by three Iraqi prime ministers after October demonstrations happened in Baghdad (2019 – 2020). The analysis follows Aristotle's Rhetoric; Logos, ethos and pathos, as persuasion strategies used to turn down the flame of popular anger agenda. Findings reveal Iraqi PMs predominantly use logos (40%) to de-escalate anger, followed by ethos (31%) and pathos (29% ).
Ali,W M . (2025). A Critical Discoursal Reading of Selected Iraqi PMs' De-escalation Speeches. Journal of Language Studies, 9(Issue 3, Part 1), 327-338. doi: 10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.17
MLA
Ali,W M . "A Critical Discoursal Reading of Selected Iraqi PMs' De-escalation Speeches", Journal of Language Studies, 9, Issue 3, Part 1, 2025, 327-338. doi: 10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.17
HARVARD
Ali W M. (2025). 'A Critical Discoursal Reading of Selected Iraqi PMs' De-escalation Speeches', Journal of Language Studies, 9(Issue 3, Part 1), pp. 327-338. doi: 10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.17
CHICAGO
W M Ali, "A Critical Discoursal Reading of Selected Iraqi PMs' De-escalation Speeches," Journal of Language Studies, 9 Issue 3, Part 1 (2025): 327-338, doi: 10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.17
VANCOUVER
Ali W M. A Critical Discoursal Reading of Selected Iraqi PMs' De-escalation Speeches. JLS. 2025;9(Issue 3, Part 1):327-338. doi: 10.25130/Lang.9.3.P1.17
