Abstract
The study of rhetoric affords us the opportunity to comprehend the communication processes that underpin agendas and actions—political or otherwise. This chapter focuses on a televised interview involving Muhyiddin Yassin, who was declared prime minister of Malaysia in February 2020 after Mahathir Mohamad’s abrupt resignation. Muhyiddin’s administration was regarded adversely from the start, with many quarters labelling it a “backdoor” government and questioning its legitimacy. The interview used for analysis, an exclusive on the COVID-19 pandemic, was held in collaboration with Radio Televisyen Malaysia and Bernama in May 2021. We analyzed the full interview (approximately 60 min and in Malay) based on the Aristotelian appeals of logos, ethos, pathos, telos and kairos. On the whole, the use of logos and ethos dominated the interview. Pathos, surprisingly, was only insignificantly manifested. We observed also the dominance of telos and consider the interview itself to be a kairotic event. The interview was largely orderly, true to the Malaysian fashion of berbudi bahasa (Malay for: to be cultured, civilised and polite). We view this study as novel; to the best of our knowledge, there is no available research at the time of this writing that employs the present study’s focus and design.
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Tan, D.A.L., Al-Rikaby, A.B.M. (2022). Aristotelian Framing in Political Discourse: A Case Study of Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s Exclusive Interview with Radio Televisyen Malaysia and the News Agency Bernama. In: Feldman, O. (eds) Adversarial Political Interviewing. The Language of Politics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0576-6_6
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