Emotion Discourse Analysis in World Politics: A Case Study of Egypt's, Sudan's and Ethiopia's Statements on GERD in UN Security Council

The present study examines the statements made by Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Shokry, Sudanese Foreign Mnister, Mariam Al-Sadiq, and Ethiopian Minister for Water, Irrigation and Energy, Seleshi Bekeli, on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in the UN Security Council Meeting on July 8, 2021 and in the press conference held after the meeting. Using Koschut’s (2020) framework for emotion discourse analysis, the study investigates the emotions expressed in the statements of the three ministers, the linguistic tools used to express them, the purposes served by these emotions as well as their contextualizing effects. Results show that positive emotions, namely hope, cooperation, persistence and understanding, negative emotions, namely resentment and worry, and neutral emotions, namely sympathy and rightness, are employed in the analyzed data. These emotions are expressed using different linguistic tools such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, connotations, metaphors, comparisons and implicature. Results also show that the emotions expressed in the ministers’ statements fulfill different purposes such as expressing hope that a legally-binding agreement would be reached, as well as resentment at Ethiopia for adopting unilateral policies and at Egypt and Sudan for addressing the Security Council and for having colonial mindsets. They are also used to express sympathy for the peoples of the two downstream countries because of the harmful effects of the GERD on their lives and for Ethiopians for their poor living conditions. In terms of the contextualizing effects of the emotions expressed in the ministers’ statements, the study shows that a Self-Other dichotomy is established through two main dualisms: hope/anger and sympathy/anger.