Discursive Strategies in Jacinda Ardern’s 2022 Harvard Commencement Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

On May 27th , 2022, Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, delivered an inspiring speech in which she warned her audience of freshly graduates from the ‘fragility’ of democracy as well as urging tech companies to act up against the danger of disinformation. The present investigation subjected the aforementioned discourse to a critical analysis applying Teun Van Dijk's (1991, 1995; 2006) analytical framework. The primary objective of this research is to identify all discursive strategies present in our speech sample, in order to elucidate how politicians employ specific language to serve specific intentions. The findings of the analysis indicate that the speaker has employed several discursive strategies as outlined by Van Dijk's model, mainly: Positive self-presentation/National Glorification, Repetition, and excessive use of pronouns. Thus the framework selected for our study was found perfectly appropriate for our research, given the prevalence of discursive strategies in our speech sample.