Implicative Argumentation in the Speeches of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

This article examines implicative argumentation in the political rhetoric of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The publication aims to identify the types of implicative argumentation found in the Ukrainian President's speeches. The object of study includes V. Zelenskyy's international and domestic video addresses during the first months of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. The subject is the types of implicative judgments within the argumentative sections of his speeches. Implication is a logical operation that forms a complex conditional judgment by combining two simple statements, where one acts as the cause and the other as the effect. The traditional logical scheme for an implicative judgment is "if..., then...". The study identified two varieties of cause-and-effect judgments in V. Zelenskyy's rhetoric. In his argumentation, the Ukrainian President employs both conditionally affirmative and conditionally negative implications. Conditionally affirmative implication can follow the traditional "if..., then..." logical scheme. However, in some cases, the President transforms it into situational variants such as: "faster..., faster...", "longer..., more...", "faster..., better...", "sooner..., more advantageous...". The same pattern is observed with conditionally negative implications. The traditional ambivalent scheme "if not..., then..." / "if..., then not..." can be transformed by V. Zelenskyy into phrases like "better now..., than later..." and "if it were..., then not...". Notably, in some of President Zelenskyy's speeches, conditionally affirmative implication is combined with conditionally negative implication. This demonstrates the orator's use of a wide range of implicative methods for constructing rhetorical argumentation.