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Тhis paper aims to investigate the language journalists use to present news from a certain perspective and thus create public opinion. More precisely, it offers a critical discourse analysis of Macedonian and American journalistic texts reporting on one and the same political event. The main goal is to compare and contrast the specific language tools (lexical-semantic, pragmatic and stylistic) employed in the journalistic texts with different political affiliation. The analysis reveals that there is interrelatedness between textual form and content. Journalists make a careful selection of persuasive strategies to frame the news and present it from certain, often 'personal', perspective. The intentionally and cautiously chosen lexical units, pragmatic markers and rhetorical tropes help journalists manipulate the news and present it in such a way that it supports a specific political cause. In this way, they tend to influence the opinions of the people and indirectly impact the political and social situation in the country.

In the face of the great danger posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders worldwide, speaking from a position of authority, delivered carefully crafted televised speeches and press conferences, intended to inform the public about the pandemic, its implications and the preventive restrictions they were imposing. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how politicians used language, particularly metaphors, when talking about and interpreting the newly created situation with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the purposes of this study a corpus was compiled of coronavirus-related speeches delivered by several key world political figures – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and Emanuel Macron. The speeches were delivered on a timeline from March to May 2020, i.e. the period that saw the inception, the peak and the gradual withdrawal of the first 'wave' of the coronavirus in Europe and the United States. A contrastive analysis of the speeches was carried out in order to detect similarities and differences in the use of metaphors on the part of the politicians, at the three specific time points of the pandemic's trajectory. The final aim was to ascertain whether any correlation existed between the use of metaphoric language and the outcome of the pandemic, i.e. how people reacted and whether they followed the politicians' instructions and recommendations. The analysis showed that a range of different metaphors permeated the analysed political speeches; however, the war metaphor presenting the pandemic as a fight against a deadly and invisible enemy was the most persistent one. The usage of war metaphor was particularly frequent during the peak of the pandemic but the results suggests that it had no real bearing on the outcome of the pandemic, i.e. people's response to politicians' calls for caution and obedience to the preventative measures.

In the face of the great danger posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders worldwide, speaking from a position of authority, delivered carefully crafted televised speeches and press conferences, intended to inform the public about the pandemic, its implications and the preventive restrictions they were imposing. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how politicians used language, particularly metaphors, when talking about and interpreting the newly created situation with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the purposes of this study a corpus was compiled of coronavirus-related speeches delivered by several key world political figures – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and Emanuel Macron. The speeches were delivered on a timeline from March to May 2020, i.e. the period that saw the inception, the peak and the gradual withdrawal of the first 'wave' of the coronavirus in Europe and the United States. A contrastive analysis of the speeches was carried out in order to detect similarities and differences in the use of metaphors on the part of the politicians, at the three specific time points of the pandemic's trajectory.

The paper offers a critical discourse and pragmatic analysis of a corpus of hateful Facebook comments of Macedonian citizens over the Macedonia naming dispute, collected immediately after the name change was officially endorsed in the Parliament. The analysis first attempts to unveil who the hateful political discourse in the given socio-political context is directed at, what roles the commenters assume, what speech acts the hateful posts are predominantly composed of (e.g. assertive, directives, expressives, commissives), as well as what kind of negative lexis and rhetorical tropes are employed by the commenters. The main aim of the research is to unveil the main features of hateful comments through detailed language analysis as they could be easily detected and extracted from social media. The results show that social media have influenced the traditional pattern of communication by introducing a more interactive and participative type of communication. Social media users employ them to direct verbal assaults not only at fellow citizens, but also at political figures, journalists, diplomats and other officials,assuming roles of analysts and judges who mostly use assertive and expressive speech acts, ingrained with a variety of negative lexis and rhetorical figures intended to reinforce their negative stance. Keywords: hate speech, social media, speech acts

Political discourse, in the name of democracy and freedom of speech, at times, obtains very harsh overtones, especially, when the stakes for politicians are high. The primary targets of politicians' abusive language are their political opponents, but, sometimes, some vulnerable categories of people become the recipients of this vilifying language as well. Stemming from authority figures, hate speech seems to have the capacity to spread like wildfire, and to bruise societies deeply. The aim of the paper is to underscore that hate speech has become an integral part of political discourse nowadays, despite the legislative implemented and the general condemnation it receives. The paper presents a number of instances of rhetorical violence generated from contemporary high-profile politicians worldwide and their targets. In an attempt to raise awareness of its destructive power when springing in the domain politics, this research also looks into the implications that it usually incurs. Keywords: political discourse, hate speech, politicians, targets, implications

In the face of the great danger posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders worldwide, speaking from a position of authority, delivered carefully crafted televised speeches and press conferences, intended to inform the public about the pandemic, its implications and the preventive restrictions they were imposing. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how politicians used language, particularly metaphors, when talking about and interpreting the newly created situation with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the purposes of this study a corpus was compiled of coronavirus-related speeches delivered by several key world political figures – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and Emanuel Macron. The speeches were delivered on a timeline from March to May 2020, i.e. the period that saw the inception, the peak and the gradual withdrawal of the first 'wave' of the coronavirus in Europe and the United States. A contrastive analysis of the speeches was carried out in order to detect similarities and differences in the use of metaphors on the part of the politicians, at the three specific time points of the pandemic's trajectory.

[full article and abstract in English] Politicians invest a lot of time and effort to win elections and present themselves in the best possible manner. They use language strategies to present and legitimise themselves as the right choice. And if they are the right choice, then their opponent is obviously not, so while they are trying to acclaim themselves and their political party, they use strategies to delegitimise and attack their opponents and the policy they represent. This paper aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis of the speeches of the two main political opponents in the last elections in the USA, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The research gives an insight into the manipulative function of language and covers two aspects: the lexical-semantic and pragmatic aspect and is based on the supposition that the strategies politicians use while talking about themselves and describing their opponents differ. As expected, they use more positive terminology to talk about themselves and their policies, and negative terminology to criticise the opponent's policy. They also employ different pragmatic strategies, such as intensifiers and inclusive pronouns, to involve the audience into the discourse and convince them in their arguments. Finally, although carried out on a relatively small corpus, the analysis gives an insight into the language techniques employed by politicians to legitimise themselves and delegitimise their opponent and thus win the elections.

Abstract Linguists concerned with diachronic research of English have established several main periods of development of the English language: Old–English (450-1100); Middle English (1100-1500) and Modern English which is further subdivided into Early Modern English (1500-1700) and Late Modern English (1700 - ). The aim of the paper is to explore the most important social, political and cultural factors that marked all these three major periods, as they undoubtedly exerted heavy influence on the making of today's English. In fact, the paper attempts to follow closely the intricate and extraordinary story of the development and evolution of the English language since its inception to date. It traces some of the major ups and downs of the language and their correlation with particular historic events primarily (but not exclusively) from Britain's great and turbulent historic past and present. The paper tries to demonstrate how all of that has been manifestly reflected in the language at various levels – pronunciation, morpho-syntax, lexis, and spelling. Keywords: English language, development, evolution, major historic events

The paper offers a critical discursive and pragmatic analysis of a corpus of hateful Facebook and Twitters status updates of politicians, political activists and voters in the 2016 pre-and-post election period, in Macedonia. Aiming to determine how power is exerted on social media, the paper focuses on identifying the stance social media users take when posting messages with political content. The analysis first attempted to unveil what speech acts the hateful posts are predominantly composed of (e.g. assertive, directives, expressives), what roles the authors of the posts normally assume, who the hateful political discourse in the given socio-political context is directed to, as well as what are some of the predominant linguistic strategies underlying the analysed hateful comments. The results show that, by using mostly assertive and expressive speech acts, social media users assume mainly the roles of analysts and judges and only subsequently the one of activists, they mostly address politicians directly and they use a lot of negative lexis, rhetorical figures and boosters as interpersonal metadiscourse markers to express their negative stance and exert power and dominance. Key words hate speech, elections, speech acts, stance, positioning, power, propaganda

Abstract. The general pervasiveness of politics in modern society renders political discourse susceptible to analysis by many different profiles of researchers, especially linguists. This particular paper attempts to shed light on the usage of verbal irony in political discourse. The premise we put forward here is that politicians in their political speeches purposefully employ irony in order to enhance the persuasiveness of their speech. Moreover, we believe that the enhancement of persuasiveness is in a direct correlation with the pragmatic functions of verbal irony. To put it differently, 'seasoning' political speeches with ironic statements which evoke either humor; or express mild ridicule, or harsh criticism at the expense of the political opponent, is what makes them truly persuasive. The corpus compiled for the purposes of this research comprises political speeches delivered by American politicians in the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The results obtained primarily confirm the relatively high incidence of verbal irony in political speeches; then, they also point to the relatively high degree of persuasion attached to irony in general and its association mainly with expressing mild ridicule and harsh criticism. Key words: political discourse, verbal irony, meta-discourse markers

In times of huge political, social, economic and religious turmoil, the world increasingly witnesses a rise in language usage for the purposes of humiliating, dehumanizing and defaming non-likeminded individuals or groups of individuals. The distinguishing feature of this inflammatory rhetoric, also widely known as hate speech, seems to be its ability to spread with the speed of light, infecting societies with intolerance, hatred and aggressive behavior, which, in turn, very often translates into personal tragedies and mass atrocities. Social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many others, definitely play a critical role in disseminating hate speech. The platforms that they provide for their users worldwide are utilized by various parties ranging from high-ranking individuals (e.g. politicians, government officials, journalists, distinguished public figures), to ordinary people from all walks of life, who in their urge to voice their dissent, resort to launching vicious, "virtual" attacks at their opponents. Given the "power" of hate speech and its potentially far-reaching repercussions, the aim of this paper is to approach and shed light on some of the essentials at the core of this phenomenon. In fact, the aim of the paper is to provide insights into the scope of hate speech and its realisations; the context and participants in hate speech, then, the role of social media in disseminating hate speech, and the actual legislative which regulates hate speech. All these aspects are instantiated and looked at through the prism of the latest political and social developments in our own homeland, the Republic of Macedonia

Politicians invest a lot of time and effort to win elections and present themselves in the best possible manner. They use language strategies to present and legitimise themselves as the right choice. And if they are the right choice, then their opponent is obviously not, so while they are trying to acclaim themselves and their political party, they use strategies to delegitimise and attack their opponents and the policy they represent. This paper aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis of the speeches of the two main political opponents in the last elections in the USA, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The research gives an insight into the manipulative function of language and covers two aspects: the lexical-semantic and pragmatic aspect and is based on the supposition that the strategies politicians use while talking about themselves and describing their opponents differ. As expected, they use more positive terminology to talk about themselves and their policies, and negative terminology to criticise the opponent's policy. They also employ different pragmatic strategies, such as intensifiers and inclusive pronouns, to involve the audience into the discourse and convince them in their arguments. Finally, although carried out on a relatively small corpus, the analysis gives an insight into the language techniques employed by politicians to legitimise themselves and delegitimise their opponent and thus win the elections. Keywords: political discourse, presidential elections, (de)legitimisation, lexical-semantic analysis, pragmatic analysis.