Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic had all the hallmarks of any crisis: novelty and unusual circumstances; urgency and time constraints; conflicting, limited, or misleading information and a need for governments, leaders, and authorities to expedite a rapid and effective action plan under conditions of extreme pressure. The COVID-19 pandemic was, however, unlike any other crises in recent times. It was a healthcare, economic, humanitarian, and social crisis, presenting a multitude of challenges and effects and shaping the future global risk landscape (World Economic Forum 2020). It had the characteristics of a cascading ‘flash’ crisis (James and Wooten 2010), as well as of what D’Auria and De Smet (2020: 2) describe as a ‘landscape scale’ crisis: ‘an unprecedent disruptive event of massive scale, the sheer unpredictability of which results in high levels of uncertainty that leads to disorientation, a feeling of loss of control, and strong emotional disturbance’.

Against this backdrop, the present study examines the political pandemic rhetoric of five national leaders, all of whom were called upon to tackle the pandemic between February and November 2020. Based on a corpus of speeches from the leaders of five democratic countries around COVID-19, we aim to demonstrate how political actors responded to the pandemic's exigence and rhetorical situation (Bitzer 1968) and in a way that was deemed strategically ‘appropriate to the moment’ (Martin 2015). Furthermore, we attempt to identify the discursive, rhetorical, and argumentative modalities by which the leaders tried to build their legitimacy and authority in a crisis moment when it was particularly fragile and more needed than ever.

The characteristics of emergency crises communication

The COVID-19 pandemic exemplified a global emergency of far-reaching consequences and immense complexity, where communication and public discourse played a central role. As crisis communication scholars Leonard and Arnold (2007) explain, all emergent crises share certain features, such as ‘high stakes and urgency, as well as the likelihood of major, imminent losses to life, health, property, heritage, or other valued social or private assets’ (p. 1). They involve a high level of contingency, that is variability in possible outcomes from different actions, while ‘response leaders’, whether politicians or other operational officials, are called upon to improvise in the absence of tested scripts for action and ‘operate beyond the bounds of what they had planned, practiced, and are resourced for’ (p. 7).