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Part of
Remedies against the Pandemic: How politicians communicate crisis management
Edited by Nadine Thielemann and Daniel Weiss
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 102] 2023
► pp. 102–134

The ‘Covid-19 presidential genre’

An exploration of off-the-cuff rhetoric of fighting the pandemic

| Makere University

This chapter examines the presidential addresses delivered by the Ugandan president during the Covid-19 lockdown. It invokes genre analysis to examine the nature of the rhetorical moves that characterised the Presidential statements. It also employs critical discourse analysis to examine the linguistic devices that the president invoked during the addresses. Focusing on the extempore narrative episodes emanating from 20 presidential addresses, the chapter explicates the nature of utterances (rebukes, warnings and reassurances) the President made. It demonstrates how the President not only invoked the war rhetoric, metaphors, and proverbs to sustain the attention of his audience but also to explain the science of the new pandemic, justify the continued lockdown and other restrictive measures, and rally support from the citizens.

Keywords: Covid-19, extempore speech, genre analysis, pandemic, war rhetoric, Runyankore-Rukiga, Uganda, communicating crisis, anecdotes, critical discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The discursive and linguistic discourses of Covid-19 pandemic
  • 3.Contextualisation of Covid-19 in Uganda
  • 4.Data and analytical approach
  • 5.The ugandan presidential Covid-19 speech genre
    • Salutation (Obligatory)
    • Instruction on dispersal features of Covid-19 (Obligatory)
    • Reaffirmation of Covid-19 restriction measures (Obligatory)
    • Evaluating the lockdown measures (Obligatory)
    • Pronouncement of additional Covid-19 measures (Optional)
    • Declaration of relief measures (Optional)
    • Closure (Obligatory)
    • Postscript (Optional)
  • 6.The nature of extempore features in the Covid-19 Presidential addresses
  • 7.President Museveni’s Covid-19 discursive strategies
    • 7.1‘Inability’ of English to render Covid-19 terms effectively
    • 7.2War rhetoric
  • 8.Sustaining the lockdown restrictions: Persuasive and coercive rhetoric
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.102.04mug
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