Revisiting the rhetorical construction of political consent 'We-strategies' and pronouns in British and Russian Covid-19 discourse

How political leaders construct consent is a constant theme of studies in political rhetoric and theories of persuasion. We explore how populist linguistic strategies combine with traditional consensus-building to align populations with the speakers’ messages. We observe similarities and diferences in discourse strategies across two contrasting polities, the UK, a foundational modern representative democracy and Russia, which is considered more autocratic. The data comes from speeches given by Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin during the Covid-19 crisis. They were analysed using Corpus Linguistics, compared in qualitative analysis that identities key lexico-grammatical features. The fndings show a convergence in some of the strategies and linguistic styles, but also key diferences which, we suggest, depend on cultural factors specifc to the two nations. The results contribute to our understanding of the operation of these resources in modern political discourse, highlighting the way cultural factors infuence rhetorical styles in very diferent political structures. © 2024 John Benjamins Publishing Company.