Strategii de persuasiune în discursul președintelui României din perioada stării de urgență. Studiu de caz
6. Persuasion strategies in the speech of the Romanian president during the state of emergency. Case Study

Summary/Abstract: Crises, as the one provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, are events created by the society and mediatized through speech. These are unexpected moments which destabilize social norms. The importance of political speech is essential during crisis times, as it represents the only available tool to control the masses. During the state of emergency in Romania, in 2020, the political leaders realized that only through speech they can convince the entire society to follow the rules imposed by WHO to limit the spread of what was then called ` the invisible enemy`: the coronavirus. In this paper, I will analyse the persuasion strategies in the Romanian president’s speeches, between March 16th and May 15th 2020. I will show that the speeches of president Iohannis were mostly marked by arguments based on logos, at the beginning of the state of emergency period, followed quickly by speeches based on emotion (pathos), using mechanisms such as: the call on people’s collective memory, the exploitation of people’s fears through exaggerated cause-effect relations, the use of words belonging to the catastrophe language, false analogy, the claim of an equal position to Romanian citizens or the use of empathy.

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