National identity is a complex sense of collectivity that is subjected to the historical, social and geopolitical context of the specific nation that may be addressed and constructed by a person who represents the nation internally and externally. The study illustrates how Critical Discourse Analysis as a relatively new direction of principally qualitative research can use quantitative tools of corpus linguistics for detecting and analysing lexical choice tendencies, the frequency and variation in presidential rhetoric in relation to national identity. The goal of the study was to analyse and compare keyword density in 150 speeches by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on nationally significant occasions over a century. By combining the Discourse-Historical Approach (henceforth DHA) with keyword analysis and KWIC analysis, the study identifies a common tendency of the presidents of the Baltic States to emphasize their foreign policies and present situation in the countries in terms of independence and national security. It is concluded that the presidents of Estonia give higher prominence to communicating ideas of nationality and statehood while the presidents Latvia and Lithuania emphasise the role of the European Union and NATO in the development of the nations. Notably, historical change seems not to influence the keyword density in the speeches as much as the occasion, political affiliation, gender and nationality of the presidents.

Presidential speeches as a type of political discourse are aimed not only at the negotiation and construction of the national identity of a nation-state at a local level but also at the representation and shaping of the national identity internationally. The presidents of the Baltic States have represented their individual, collective and regional identities in the international gatherings of world leaders since the restoration of independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the Soviet Union. The current study displays an analysis of how the keyness factor of particular lexical items used in 142 speeches given by the presidents of the Baltic States internationally from 1991 until 2021 helps to identify the tendencies of identity construction and representation, which can then be investigated in detail via a critical analysis of the discursive strategies and linguistic means applied in the speeches. Moreover, the analysis of keyword tendencies across speeches marked by different criteria shows how the process of identity construction as marked by lexical change varies across time and states. The keyness factor points to multiple identities being constructed in the international speeches, where the national identities are constructed most frequently, followed by the common European identity, Baltic regional identity, and global identity. It is also concluded that a common political past is one of the main elements of national and Baltic identities, while shared values such as democracy and cooperation are the main elements of supra-national identities.

Retorika kā pārliecināšanas māksla kopš Aristoteļa laikiem, īpaši pēdējā gadsimta laikā, izpelnījusies kritiskās diskursa analīzes pētnieku uzmanību. Retoriskie jautājumi kā viens no politiskajā diskursā lietotajiem retorisko līdzekļu veidiem tiek škietami par zemu novērtēti, it sevišķi situācijās, kad runas mērķis nav skaidri redzama argumentācija, pārliecināšana vai manipulācija. Attiecīgi retorisko jautājumu slēptā doma enkurojas dziļāk diskursa uztveres procesā un tādējādi atmiņā tiek uzglabāta ilgāk. Pētījumā analizētas 175 Baltijas valstu prezidentu runas, kas sniegtas dažādos nacionāli svarīgos brīžos kopš Latvijas valsts neatkarības pasludināšanas vai neatkarības atjaunošanas Lietuvā un Igaunijā līdz valstu simtgadei 2018. gadā. Veiktais pētījums salīdzina retorisko jautājumu lietojumu prezidentu runās sinhronajā un diahronajā skatījumā un analizē to potenciālo ietekmi uz klausītāju, ņemot vērā jautājumu tematisko un diskursīvo saturu Baltijas valstu sociālā, vēsturiskā un politiskā kontekstā. Pētījuma rezultātā tiek secināts, ka retorisko jautājumu lietojums, izmantojot tādas nacionālās identitātes veidošanas stratēģijas kā kopējās politiskās vēstures konstrukcija, valsts kā nacionāla kopuma komunikācija un nāciju politiskās tagadnes un nākotnes konstrukcija, var uzrunāt cilvēku zemapziņas emocionālo līmeni un konkrēti atbildības un piederības sajūtu, tādējādi netieši veidojot klausītāju uztveri un ietekmējot to potenciālo rīcību attiecībā pret valsti. Turklāt vairākos gadījumos tiek secināts, ka retoriskie jautājumi lietoti kombinācijā ar citiem stratēģiski spēcīgiem valodas līdzekļiem, kā metafora, hiperbola un paralēlās teikumu struktūras, kas pastiprina vēlamo retorisko efektu uz klausītāju. Tāpat, salīdzinot retorisko jautājumu lietojumu sinhronajā aspektā tika secināts, ka Latvijas un Lietuvas prezidentu runās šie jautājumi tiek lietoti retāk nekā Igaunijas prezidentu runās. Attiecībā uz diahronajām izmaiņām retorisko jautājumu lietojumā, secināts, ka laika gaitā retorisko jautājumu skaits runās palielinās, tomēr šīs izmaiņas drīzāk ietekmē tādi savstarpēji neatkarīgi radītāji kā prezidenta politiskā piederība, runas mērķis, kontekstuālā situācija vai runas tips un mērķauditorija.

Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as the art of observing the available means of persuasion is one of the most widely used quotations not only in linguistics but also in social, political, and communication sciences. Aristotle, apart from defining the elements of rhetoric (logos, ethos and pathos), has proposed three types of rhetoric that refer either to the present situation (ceremonial), the past (judicial), or the future (political). The current president of Latvia and his language use is one of the most widely discussed topics across the media and academia due to the register, style, and content of his speeches. Moreover, the president of Latvia has a direct impact on how the state is perceived nationally and internationally; thus, it is significant to investigate the linguistic profile of the linguistic expression of the ideas communicated by the president to the wider public. The current study analyses 160 speeches given by president Egils Levits on nationally significant occasions as well as internationally with the aim to investigate whether the speeches of the president of Latvia correspond to the ceremonial, political or judicial rhetoric because the president represents both legal and political discourse as the former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and the former minister of Justice, and as the head of the Republic of Latvia represents the state nationally and abroad. The study is grounded in the theories on rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis applied to political discourse and presidential language and discussed by scholars such as Aristotle (1959), Van Dijk (2006), Chilton and Schäffner (2002), O’Keeffe (2006), Van Dijk (2008), David (2014), Wilson (2015) and Wodak and Mayer (2016). The results of the current study reveal that the speeches are a clear representation of a combination of legal, political, and ceremonial rhetoric and cross various semantic fields that are marked by the use of field terminology in combination with topos of definition and name interpretation to explain the terms directly in the speeches. The speeches by Levits are furthermore marked by relatively frequent use of loanwords, neologisms, obsolete words, and compounds that is one of the main characteristics of the linguistic profile of his speeches. Additional characteristic features are the use of parallel sentence constructions, inverted word orders, rhetorical questions, and pronominal referencing to attract the listener's attention and emphasize the thematic areas of the speeches. Nevertheless, it has been concluded that such linguistic techniques as metaphors, metonymies, synecdoche, or hyperbole are used comparatively less frequently, thus making the speeches appear more formal and less emotional from the linguistic point of view.

The term democracy, which is a compound noun consisting of two Greek words demos and kratos and stands for people and power, recently has acquired yet another meaning, that of a way of governing the state based on the will of people. Communication is one of the key elements of a democratic polity; whereas language serves as one of the key forms in the realisation of political communication. The public communication of political leaders of the Baltic States, specifically, the presidents as representative leaders, during the tree decades of restored independence has been focused on the idea of democracy, emphasizing the thematic areas of ‘returning to the West,’ ‘returning to Europe,’ and ‘returning to democracy’ as central elements of national identities of those states. The paper offers a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of presidential speeches given by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the three decades of independence with the focus on the linguistic representation and discursive construction of democracy.