Investigating Power Negotiation through Rhetorical Exchange between Washington and Pyongyang: A Systemic Functional and Semantic Perspective

Abstract

This article associates the semantic resources for meaning construction and the Hallidayan systemic functional standard to analyse and explain the ongoing tough rhetorical exchange between Washington and Pyongyang over the nuclear weapon development program. The major and ground-breaking result of this exclusively scientific work posits that the outcome of the rhetorical exchange between two presumably unequal interlocutors does not depend on the state of affairs in the real world alone. Rather, it might have much to do with their mental representations which includes their epistemic and deontic states of mind. The findings offer insights into the existence of a power negotiation instance through the rhetorical exchange between the first world power who avails itself of indicating what the rule should be and a presumably less developed and less powerful country who keeps on resisting by drawing the world‘s attention on its weaponry that it deems respectworthy, and by taking into account some geopolitical factors and some mental states as this paper concludes.