The president’s speech: An analysis of Covid-19 discourse in Iranian president’s speeches

This paper tries to provide a better understanding of Covid-19 discourse which has taken shape in Haasan Rouhani’s speeches. The importance of discourses in giving meaning to human actions and practices has been well documented by post-structuralists and post-modernists thinkers (Young, 1981; Foucault, 2009, 2001; Derrida, 1978). As such, we will analyze how Rouhani was trying to turn Covid-19 from an empty signifier to a meaningful one by articulating it in an emerging discourse around Covid-19. Since the president of Iran has been purportedly considered as the representative of official discourse, this study could enhance our knowledge on the official reading of Covid-19 in an authoritative country. We argue that Rouhani tried to articulate Covid-19, which is inherently a medical signifier, into a merely political and religious discourse. Following Laclau and Mouffe (1985) theory of discourse analysis, we will investigate all of Rouhani’s speeches from February 2, 2020 to April 27, 2020 (in his cabinet) in order to examine our argumentation. In total, we collected 91 speeches which are publicly available in Official website of the President of Iran (http://www.president.ir). We will code all these speeches thematically in two rounds based on Saldana’s (2015) guideline for provisional and pattern coding methods. While a growing body of research has already emerged from medical disciplines, this study contributes to our understanding of the novel coronavirus from a discursive perspective, particularly in an authoritative context. The first draft of manuscript will be ready by June 2020.