Georgia's Path to Europe - A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Speeches by President Salome Zourabichvili and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili
Abstract
Social and political phenomena come into existence through a discursive dimension. The linguistic construction of reality is pervasive as well as predetermining social and political environment. The present paper undertakes a linguistic scrutiny of Georgia’s endeavor to become a member state of the European Union. Joining the EU (accession) exists linguistically in a discursive dimension before its political establishment. The accession officially started on March 3, 2022. Therefore, President Salome Zourabichvili’s and former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s speeches/addresses stored at the official websites represent the discursive formation of Georgia’s path to the European Union. This article seeks to study the perceptions of the EU accession through 97 speeches delivered by the president and the prime minister of Georgia with the help of corpus linguistics software tools #LancsBox® and Wmatrix5® alongside corpus linguistics (CL) and discourse analysis (DA), which is referred to as corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Moreover, the application of CADS to Georgian political discourse analysis is a novel endeavor itself. The paper scrutinizes lexical frequencies (a quantitative aspect) as well as identifying semantic/notional domains (a qualitative aspect) that the political figures most frequently resort to. The paper attempts to shed light on the discursive choices the politicians make regarding the European path, which is essential in the current political unrest and polarization. Based on Keyword and T-score analysis of essential collocates along with stance-taking peculiarities, the findings show that the speakers convey their intent to the listeners through their own idiolects.
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