The Speeches of World Leaders about the War (1941): Rhetoric and Context

Student: Zavgorodniy Egor

Supervisor: Mikhail Velizhev

Educational Programme: Philology (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2017

This paper is devoted to describing and comparing the speeches of world leaders about the beginning of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941. The speeches of Stalin, Molotov, Hitler and Churchill are considered in the historical perspective and perspective of the traditional military rhetoric of states: from the point of view of linguistics, extra-textual means of expressiveness and methods of influencing the final listener. On the basis of the received data, common features of totalitarian rhetoric are being built at the time of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War - how the concrete ideology is conveyed to the citizens of the world. Among other things, textual analysis of four speeches - three (Molotov's, Hitler's and Churchill's) from June 22, 1941 and one (Stalin's) - on July 3 will be held.

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