Volodymyr Zelensky: 2024 address to the UN General Assembly

A wartime leader at the UN is arguing for continued support from an audience that may be tiring of the war. Delivered in Zelensky's second language, the speech is plain and forceful, built on direct address, repetition and hard either-or choices.

• Direct challenge (second person)

  To those floating alternative peace plans: You will not boost your power at Ukraine's expense.

  Effect: naming and addressing a section of the audience directly turns a general speech into a confrontation, and dares anyone in that position to object.

• Wordplay on the institution's name

  Do not divide the world. Be united nations.

  Effect: punning on United Nations reminds the delegates what their organisation is supposed to be, and frames disunity as a failure to live up to their own title.

• Binary framing

  Peace proposals are sorted into a real end to the war versus a mere lull.

  Effect: the two-option frame leaves no room for compromise positions and casts anything short of his preferred outcome as a trick.

• Imperative mood

  Instructions to the audience: put pressure on Russia.

  Effect: commands rather than requests present support for Ukraine as a duty already owed, not a favour being asked.

• Repetition and short sentences

  Key words and simple declaratives recur through the speech.

  Effect: repetition aids a non-native speaker's clarity and force, and makes individual lines easy to lift out as headlines and clips.

• Moral absolutes

  The war is framed in terms of what is right and what cannot be allowed, with little qualification.

  Effect: absolute language removes grey areas and makes neutrality sound like a moral position rather than a cautious one.

The line Be united nations depends on a pun. Write a paragraph on how wordplay on an institution's own name can work as an argument, holding the audience to a standard they have already signed up to.