Abstract
This study examines
how dominance and resistance are simultaneously enacted at ideological and
linguistic levels in wartime political discourse during the 2026 U.S.–Iran
conflict, focusing on political leaders in the United States and Iran. Drawing
on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with particular emphasis on van Dijk’s
socio‑cognitive approach and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the
research analyzes how ideology, power, and social cognition are linguistically
realized in wartime political discourse. The data consist of 6 purposively
selected excerpts drawn from the United States presidential and defense
briefings by President Donald Trump and diplomatic statements by Iranian
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Findings reveal that the United States wartime
discourse constructs dominance through ideological strategies such as positive
self‑presentation, negative other‑presentation, threat amplification,
historical legitimation, and inevitability framing. These strategies are
linguistically realized through high‑certainty modality, material processes
foregrounding the United States agency, evaluative intensification,
imperatives, and thematically controlled sequencing that normalizes military
force. In contrast, Iranian discourse constructs resistance through legal‑moral
counter‑framing, humanitarian appeals, victim positioning, and civilizational
identity construction. Linguistically, resistance is realized through
relational processes emphasizing affectedness, categorical assertions,
humanitarian listing, norm‑based appraisal, and thematic foregrounding of
suffering and accountability. By integrating van Dijk’s socio‑cognitive
framework with Halliday’s SFL, the study demonstrates how wartime political
discourse functions as a constitutive force that shapes audience mental models,
legitimizes action, and negotiates power. The research contributes
methodologically by bridging ideological analysis and linguistic realization,
and empirically by offering a comparative account of how dominance and
resistance are discursively enacted in high‑stakes international conflict. The
study demonstrates that wartime political discourse functions not only to
describe conflict but to actively shape ideology, legitimacy, and public
understanding.
DOI: 10.36349/alqajolls.2026.v01i02.030
author/Aliyu Uthman Abdulkadir & Oluwatomi Adeoti
journal/AL-QALAM JLLS 1(2) | June 2026
