Cross-linguistic study of attitudinal language of press conferences of Iranian and American foreign ministers: The nuclear negotiations in focus

The political potential of language is undeniable and politicians are well aware of this potentiality. Through well-formed and purposeful language use, they attempt to mold influence and exercise their power not only on their peer politicians but also on public opinion. Language of politics has been investigated widely; however, language of diplomacy in the genre of press conferences still warrants further research. To this end, the current study analyzed the language of two diplomats namely American secretary John Kerry and Iran foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in terms of attitudinal markers in the press conferences of Iran nuclear case. Attitude is a subsystem of appraisal model which is a system of interpersonal meanings. It includes emotional responses, judgments of people and their behavior and evaluating things and natural phenomena. Therefore, the attitudinal categories and subcategories in the press conferences were identified with reference to Martin and Rose (2007) and Martin and White (2005). We also identified the type and frequency of explicit attitudinal markers, their sources and targets in the context. The results indicated that positive evaluations were more dominant in these political speeches and this quality of holding positive attitude might be attributed to the nature of diplomatic talks. Among the attitudinal markers, in/security, the subcategory of affect, scored the highest proportion. The results can partly justify the claim from the international community particularly from America that Iran nuclear case is a security risk and the counterclaim made by Iran that their case is only for peaceful purposes. Besides, the results viewed a shift in evaluations from a merely negative evaluation of Iran nuclear case as a threat to a more positive evaluation after the agreement.