The power of speech and language play a major role when they are used by strong leaders and prominent news outlets. This paper investigates the speeches of the US president Joe Biden about the war on Gaza after the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023. The paper illustrates that Biden used post-truth politics and emotionally charged discourse in order to shape the public opinions and keep the military actions against Gaza going. Emotionally charged phrases such as “beheaded babies”, despite being unverified, provoke moral outrage and anger against Hamas’ attack. The paper takes Teun A. van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to reveal how Biden’s language excludes Palestinian realities, brands dissent as illegitimate, and relies on an “us vs. them” perspective which systematically closes down alternative narratives. We found out that not only Biden but global media appear to legitimize military actions against the Palestinians using a claim that has never been verified. We concluded that the emotionally charged language, as a key characteristic of post-truth politics, is a more reliable source of information than objective truths.
Sohaıb ALWAHEIDI (Wed,) studied this question.
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