Humanitarianism in Biden’s speeches on the Palestine- Israel Conflict: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Commonly, the topic of humanitarianism (i.e., the embodiment of an ideology of human compassion) has not been given its due concern neither in terms of Critical Discourse Analysis studies nor in political speeches. Moreover, there is lack of studies that handle the topic in president Biden’s speeches.As such, the current study tries to bridge this gap by answering the questions of :What are the strategies of the ideology of humanitarianism in Biden’s speeches on the Palestine-Israel conflict? What are the most and the least employed strategies in the speeches in question?, And finally, why does Biden employ these strategies?

The study employs Van Dijk’s model that involves appropriate tactics for the overall strategy of "positive self-representation" and "negative other-representation" as ideological constructions in discourse.

The study finds that Biden implements various strategies like actor description, metaphor, victimization, lexicalization, empathy, presupposition number game, and compassion. In terms of the most employed strategies, they are compassion, empathy and lexicalization, yet the least utilized ones are presupposition, and  number game. Finally, the ideology of humanitarianism in Biden’s speeches is mainly done throughout his ideologized plans of positive self –representation as feeling the suffering, and having compassion towards people of Israel, while Hamas, as a representative of Palestinians, is portrayed as terrorist organization, slaughtering scores of Israeli people and committing many vicious massacres, as such humanitarian. As such the strategies of humanitarianism are ideological.