Critical Discourse Analysis of Power, Ideology, National Interest, and Identity in Diplomacy: The impact of 2025 Trump-Zelenskyy talks on International Relations

Abstract

Abstract
Using the final ten minutes of the Trump Zelenskyy discussions as a much-staged diplomatic encounter with significant international relations implications, this paper will examine the discursive construction of power, ideology, national interest and identity. Following a qualitative interpretivist paradigm, it uses Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis and theme analysis with the help of the Taguette coding tool. Five themes demonstrated are intertwined namely; speaker interaction and power, features and style of language, questioning as a control, framing of conflict and diplomacy, and expression of emotions as persuasion. The findings reveal that interruptions, the use of modality wielded to the best advantage, assessment language, and metaphors are modes of establishing superiority and justification of their positions and construct geopolitical truths to accommodate the national interests at play. The study itself adds value to the scholarship because it is not based on crafted statements by the diplomats, but addresses the idea of how words can demonstrate and reproduce diplomatic power. It also constitutes a replicable methodological framework where discourse about politics is analyzed due to the strategic nature of the use of language to determine the global political outcomes.