Sympathy in King Abdulla II’s and Angela Merkel’s Speeches

This paper pragmatically examines sympathy in two refugee-focused speeches, one by Jordan’s King Abdulla II and another by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is achieved by unfolding the illocutionary activities and presuppositions underlying compassion and sympathy and then contrasting these subthemes across the two speeches. To do so, a qualitative methodology combining Searle’s (1969) model and Levinson’s (1983) model has been followed in the analysis. The paper, principally, elaborates on sympathy as a crucial aspect in the pragmatic interpretation of the two selected speeches. This involves a rigorous study of the words, phrases, and sentences relevant to sympathy, supported by frequencies. The two speeches, then, are compared to compassion, speech actions, and presupposition. Firstly, the paper introduces the topic, and this covers key definitions, theoretical assumptions, and a few similar studies, as well. Then, two speeches are selected, examined, and probed for sympathy. The paper, finally, concludes with findings, results, and some suggestions for further research. The paper finds that the two speeches have been very supportive of migrants. There is, also, a remarkable difference between the Arab discourse and the European discourse concerning the refugees and migrants’ crises.