Leadership and expressivity: The interplay of speech and gesture in Andrzej Duda's anti-war rhetoric

Abstract

The paper discusses the relationship between leadership and expressivity as exemplified by the Polish President's address to the Ukrainian Parliament delivered on 22 May 2022. The study draws on existing understandings of expressivity and discursive leadership as well as previous studies on gesture in political rhetoric. Co-speech gestures are discussed as an interactional resource linked to emotion and evaluation, and as an inseparable part of the speaker's public persona and identity. Following Bednarek (2011), the analysis considers the president's expressivity at the micro-, meso- and macro -level, and it identifies a range of linguistic and gestural resources with which Andrzej Duda constructs a positive involved style while "communicating emotion" and "doing intensity". The analysis also links the president's linguistic expression of ardour and gestural behaviour to leadership capabilities, explaining how "relating to the audience" and "visioning" can stir and mobilise the audience in times of war and uncertainty.