| Abstract [eng] |
The leading role of U.S. foreign policy in the context of international politics is generally accepted as a political standard of multilateral hegemony (Hardt & Negri, 2000). With Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, the globalised approach to international order has been questioned by the President himself and some of the decisions carried out by his administration (Druckman, 2019). The world media and national governments in Europe responded to such political rhetoric and actions as the U.S. plotted a trajectory towards unilateralism and isolationism. This study aims to clarify how the current international order is perceived by leaders representing the EU, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. To achieve the above, the UN general assembly speeches delivered by President of the EU Council Donald Tusk (the EU), President Piotr Poroshenko (Ukraine), President Vladimir Putin and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov (Russia), President Alexander Lukashenko and Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei in the time span of four years (from 2015 to 2018 inclusively) were collected. The research data consists of 15,897 tokens that were analysed within the analytical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2011; Musolff, 2016, 2018) by procedurally applying Pragglejaz Group’s Metaphor Identification Procedure (2007). It has been determined that the collective identity of the international order is mainly represented by two metaphorical legitimacy strategies: value-systems and targeting, both serving two different ideological purposes of (1) reinstating Western multilateralism (Donald Tusk and Piotr Poroshenko) and (2) opposing it (Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Malei). In addition to these, the leaders maintain their legitimacy by mobilising for collective action, establishing a set of obligations and victimising the in-group. |
