UNVEILING THE RHETORIC OF POWER AND IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED TWEETS OF PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL CONFLICTS

Abstract

Politicians enunciate speeches which they use as vehicles to get their ultimate goals and social media platforms nowadays have been a great source where everyone can reach out to the thoughts of these global leaders. The objective of this dissertation is to analyze the tweets of several well-known, and influential Global politicians to reveal that how these politicians use discursive strategies in writing their tweets. By examining the "self" and "other" identities regarding political events, they employ rhetorical tactics to convey their political beliefs and ideologies. Ideological Square Model theory presented by Van Dijk (1998) is put into practice in order to understand objectives of the politicians for portraying the Israelites as a global symbol of strength, kindness, and virtue, whereas portraying the Palestinians and their supporters as a source of evil and darkness, The sample of the research is 18 tweets made by global politicians regarding Israel and Palestine war. These tweets are chosen through purposive sampling technique. The research paradigm is qualitative and critical discourse analysis is used as the method of the study. The findings of the study unveil that these tweets have an abundant use of discursive strategies like metaphors, categorization, comparison, consensus, euphemism, illustrations/examples, lexicalization, actor description, and populism etc. Furthermore, this study emphasizes how important language characteristics like other-negative representation and self-positive representation are in influencing public opinion. It also highlights how crucial it is to identify the deceptive language that leaders use to manipulate followers' thoughts and forward their own agendas. These strategies may be successful in influencing public opinion and winning over supporters, as demonstrated by Trump's address.