Retoryka strachu w czasie pandemii Covid-19. Przypadek Emmanuela Macrona

Abstract

— ABSTRACT — The article presents the results of the analysis of the speech of President Emmanuel Macron on March 16, 2020 on French TV. It indicates the importance of referring to the logic of fear and the sense of threat in contemporary political discourse. The analysis of the content allowed to identify the most important features of the rhetoric of fear that dominated the presidential speech full of sensational metaphors and war references, which are an excellent example of moral panic in a crisis when the demand for information increases. The discourse analysis covers lexical and syntactic linguistic means, where extremely frequent war metaphors enable the manipulation of social opinion and the implementation of the concept of citizens’ responsibility.