Dissecting the COVID19 Speeches of President Rodrigo Duterte through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis

In time of pandemic, a message from a country’s leader is critical to calm the shaken nation, address the challenges, and put things in order. There are a number of studies using CDA for political speeches, but few have dealt with recent speeches about COVID19 pandemic. This paper specifically problematizes the covid19 speeches of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines which have not yet been explored. Thus, this study endeavors on investigating the linguistic features, cohesion, and social issues and ideology embedded in the covid19 speeches of President Duterte. This qualitative study utilized the Systemic Functional Linguistics as a method of data analysis. It was found that covid19 speeches of President Duterte generally highlights promoting inclusivity and service to the nation and this was achieved through his dominant use of personal pronouns, present and future tenses, present progressives, use of modal verbs will and through the properties of cohesion found in his speeches. His linguistic choices also revealed two layers of meaning clustered into extrinsic and intrinsic meanings. Although the speeches encourage solidarity and inclusivity, it was also loaded with forewarning against corrupt officials. Meanwhile, social issues found which are distinct from his non-covid19 speeches in terms of

Political speeches of a president in this time of pandemic are imperative to inform the citizens of the status quo of the country and other relevant information that would calm the shaken nation and put things in order. Since the coronavirus pandemic swept the borders of Philippines and upon implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has been delivering series of messages or national addresses to all constituents. President Duterte's speeches have been a subject of debate because of his rhetorical styles and speeches that often spew cusswords. In one of his covid19 speeches, media highlighted a phrase he uttered when he said, "shoot them dead," which was his warning to quarantine violators. With these controversies surrounding his speeches, this paper problematizes the social issues, ideology, linguistic features and coherence of President Duterte's covid19 speeches using the approach of critical discourse analysis specifically the Systemic Functional Linguistics of Halliday and Matthiessen. As Fairclough (1995) puts it, ideology is found in language structure and language events which means the linguistic form and style and content. Fairclough (1995) forwarded his hypothesis that there is a relationship or interconnections between the features of text (ways in which texts are put together and interpreted) and the nature of social practice.
Several qualitative and quantitative researches have been conducted investigating the political discourse of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte under the lens of CDA. For instance, Rubic-Remorosa (2018) conducted a CDA of PDU30 speeches in terms of the linguistic features, rhetorical strategies and the issues that cover his speeches. Sabio and Lintao (2018) focused on the stylistic and reasoning strategies of PDu30, and Medriano and De Vera (2019) on the illocutionary acts underneath the political speeches of PDu30. Though all of them used PDu30's political speeches as corpus and Rubic-Remosa (2018) applied CDA, none of them have utilized two factors that this paper dealt on which are the cohesion in PDu30's speeches and the analysis of his speeches during the covid19 pandemic. We argue that covid19 speeches of PDu30 is distinct from his other political speeches largely because of the context of a global pandemic.
Grounding from these established research gaps and from the hypothesis of Fairclough (1995) as briefly discussed above, this paper will fill up the niche with the guidance of the following research questions: 1. What are the common linguistic features and its interpersonal meanings found in the covid19 speeches of President Duterte? 2. What properties of cohesion are found in the speeches? 3. What are the social issues and ideologies identified in those speeches?

Theoretical Lens
This paper employed the Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytical framework to examine the covid19 speeches of President Duterte. In particular, I used the Systemic Functional Linguistics of Halliday and Matthiessen. Sriwimon and Zilli (2017) state that CDA can be utilized both as a conceptual and analytical framework in investigating linguistic choices of the speaker and ideologies. Fairclough (1992) defines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a frame of analysis that examines the relationships between and among language, power and ideology; where it integrates the (1) analysis of text, (2) analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, consumption and distribution), and (3) sociocultural analysis of the discursive event or sociocultural practice.
Systemic Functional Theory of MAK Halliday takes into account the exploration of power language as semogenic or "meaningmaking," central to this meaning-making is the description of grammatical resources (Halliday and Webster, 2009). According to Halliday, critical analysis of language and grammar is needed to arrive at the meaning behind discourses (Takal, 2018). Therefore, every single lexico-grammar entail meaning. For instance, the way a speaker or writer use the pronoun you imply a certain meaning which could reveal biases, hegemony, or ideology.
Systemic Functional Theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) addresses the meaning in multiple perspectives as it proposes the three metafunctions of language: the ideational, interpersonal and textual (Armstrong, 2009;Locke 2004;Takal, 2018). Interpersonal meaning is related to the process of social interactions that are occurring (social reality). This can be divided into two functions: the identity and relational functions. Identity functions relate to the social construction of identity and prejudices, while relational function involves the construction of social relationships. Ideational meaning is related to either the experiential (or the meaning from the experiences) or logical (meaning is the shared position of one participant to another or one process to another) meaning (Locke, 2004). And lastly, textual meaning indicates the intricate linguistic features in a text that gives away to its coherence.
The three metafunctions of language of SFL would therefore facilitate in analyzing the meaning of PDu30's speeches in terms of the following: first, the interpersonal meaning will shed light on PDu30's stance on an issue, his attitude and opinion and how he positions or distance himself towards various people around him. The ideational meaning will aid in dissecting the social issues and ideologies implicitly or explicitly mentioned by PDu30. According to Takal (2018) it tells the current situation or the experiences. Lastly, textual meaning delves into cohesive markers used in the oral text.
The identity and relational function can be analysed using the Interpersonal Meta-Functions (Locke, 2004) which consist of the following properties: interactional control, modality, politeness, ethos, connectiveness and argumentation (cohesion), transitivity and theme, word meaning, wording, and metaphor. In this study, I used the modality, cohesion, and put together the word meaning; wording; and metaphor under the category of vocabulary.
Guided by the theoretical framework discussed, figure 1 below depicts how the data gathered were analyzed. The three meta-functions of SFL were utilized in this study to explore the layers of meaning behind the covid19 speeches of President Duterte. As can be seen, interpersonal meaning was used to analyze the word meaning, wording and metaphor and I categorized it as vocabulary. Modality and tense and aspect were also analyzed under the interpersonal meaning. To explore the social issues and ideology, ideational meaning was employed. Finally, textual meaning was operated to investigate the cohesion properties of the speeches using the connectiveness and argumentation under the Interpersonal Meta-function properties (Locke, 2004). Under the cohesion, I employed the four types of explicit cohesive markings by Halliday and Hasan (1976 as cited in Lavadia and Temporal, 2018) such as reference (relates to the use of pronouns), substitution, ellipsis and conjunctions (cohesive markers).

Literature Review
When it comes to studies analysing speeches of government leaders or officials, critical discourse analysis has often been the theoretical lens utilized by the majority of researchers. Fairclough (1992) Halliday (1978), which then gave offspring to the growing interest in the study of CDA.
As stated by Rogers (2011, p.2), "language is a social practice and because not all social practices are created and treated equally, all analyses of language are inherently critical." And by critical it means criticism is inevitable. Critical discourse analysis is often associated with the investigation of abuse of power by the dominant groups channeled through discourse to control the beliefs and actions of the less dominant or powerless groups (van Dijk, 2009). An example of this is the control of media. When the dominant group has control over media, they are able to brainwash or influence the audience through their choice of information they wish to produce, reproduce or share in public. CDA is often now synonymous to language studies of power manipulations, power relations, social issues and practices, and ideologies and their production, reception, and dissemination (van Dijk 2009, Locke 2004, Fairclough 1992, 1995 Several studies have been conducted examining political speeches through critical discourse analysis, discourse analysis and pragmatics. For instance, Sabio and Lintao (2018) shed light on the "often" controversial speeches of Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and showed that the most prevalent stylistic strategy found is clarity, through the president's use of ordinary words, and intensity through the largely use of metaphor in almost all his speeches. Meanwhile, argument by cause is the dominant reasoning strategies identified from the speeches.
Employing a discourse analysis, Quijano and Bulusan (2020) explored the rhetorical appeals and devices used by past and present Philippine Presidents such as Duterte, Aquino, and Arroyo. In terms of the rhetorical devices, their study found that Duterte frequently use parallelism as a technique to appeal to the emotion in order to relate to their audience. Rubic-Remorosa (2018) employed a CDA to examine the linguistic features, rhetorical strategies and social issues embedded in the discourses of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. The study depicted that personal pronouns, passivity, transitivity, verb tenses and aspects are the linguistic features found. Rhetoric strategies were the use of presupposition, rhetorical questions, ellipsis, and intertextuality. President Duterte's speeches center on the following issues: socio-economic, legal and political; specifically highlighted are the issues on war on drugs, criminality, and graft and corruption. Meanwhile, Medriano and De Vera (2019) investigated the dominant construction of the monological speeches of President Duterte and revealed that Duterte uses illocutionary acts such as assertive, commissive, verdictive, directive, declarative and expressive. The study disclosed the dominant use of material and relational processes; the frequent occurrences of the modal "must" in the president's speech; highly use of present tense; and the almost 100% use of the pronoun "we".
Najarzadegan, Dabaghi and Eslami-Rasekh (2017) examined the discursive strategies utilized in the 2013 speeches of Iranian and American presidents, Obama and Rouhani, respectively. It was disclosed that in the speech of then-President Obama, polarization, self-glorification, positive self-presentation, negative-other presentation and victimization are the discursive strategies used. Meanwhile, Rouhani mostly used metaphor, vagueness, negative-other presentation and national selfglorification.
A study on opinion articles from three of the big newspapers in the Philippines were conducted by Lavadia and Malenab-Temporal (2018) using the theory of cohesion framework of Halliday and Hasan (1976). Their study revealed a prevalent use of reference and conjunctions in the grammatical ties and the use of repetition, collocation and synonymy/near synonymy in lexical ties. These linguistic cementing accordingly are imperative to achieve cohesion in text. Malimas, Carreon and Peña (2018) analysed the campaign speeches of Filipino women politicians from 2010-2016 in terms of the parts of their speech outline and their linguistic features. The study revealed that these women politicians used the six parts of speech outline which are appreciation, declaration of intentions, international relations and foreign policies, unveiling plans and ideologies, appeal for unity, and ending. Moreover, the researchers also identified the use of "super polite forms" and question-intonation on declaratives in their linguistic features.
Following a review of literature and studies, gaps among these studies are identified. First, common to these studies on political discourses were the use of framework from Halliday and Matthiessen's (2014) SFL, specifically the transitivity and interpersonal meta-functions (modality, tense and aspect, pronouns). Second, these studies have utilized either campaign speeches or speeches from various speaking engagement of a president or politicians. From this point, notable is that none have dealt so far on the analysis of a president's speech during a pandemic. The last pandemic that swept the world was the Spanish flu in the 1970s that were reportedly to have killed millions of people. Under the current weather, it is interesting to linguistically analyze and problematize the speeches of President Duterte in the midst of pandemic-a trying times-and examine if ideologies and power dominance is entrenched in his speeches.

Methodology
This research is a Critical Discourse Analysis of the speeches of Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte during the covid19 pandemic. It employed a descriptive qualitative method. The corpus used are the four national address and messages of President Duterte during the period of the implementation of the community quarantine. Only four speeches were employed because in his other covid19 speeches, he included some of his cabinet members in addressing the nation, and this, however, is not part of the scope of corpus in this study. These oral texts were retrieved in the online archive of the website of the Presidential Communications Operations Office.
To analyze the data, I employed the three meta-functions under the Systemic Functional Linguistics of Halliday and Matthiessen (2014). The properties of interpersonal meta-functions I analysed are the modality, pronoun, tense and aspect, and vocabulary (metaphor, synonymy, word choice). The ideational meaning was utilized to examine the social issues and ideology found in the text while textual meaning was employed to analyze the cohesion (substitution, cohesive markers, and reiteration) aspect of the texts.

Results and Discussion
The sequence of the presentation of the findings is congruent with the research questions stipulated in the Introduction. In this section, I presented the linguistic features found in the speeches. These linguistic features allowed the researcher to apply a lexico-grammar approach to meaning-making. For instance, what impact does the use of present tense have in the discursive practice (interpretation) and the social practice (social reality) of the speech? •

Linguistic features a. Tense and Aspect
From the frequency of occurrences of the tense and aspect found in the oral texts, Duterte's speeches during the time of a global pandemic is dominated by the use of simple present (45%) followed by simple present progressive (22%) and simple future (16%), while less than 1% only in the use of present perfect progressive. The dominant use of simple present shows timeliness of the speech in light of the covid19 pandemic. Duterte uses simple present particularly to express his gratitude and to give orders to his subordinates in the executive departments, particularly his cabinet members.
In his speeches, Duterte often begins by expressing his gratitude and acknowledging all the frontliners who have been working day and night to treat patients with covid19, to maintain peace and order in the community, and to provide goods and services amidst the implemented Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) where every citizen is tasked to stay at home and observe necessary health preventive measures. The frontliners that he often acknowledges in every beginning of his speech are the doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, police, soldiers, civil servants and everyone who are performing essential services. He also thanked the two leaders in the congress: House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and Senate President Vicente Sotto III for their swift passage of the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, an act that gives the Executive Department additional power to mobilize his people in order to contain the pandemic. Moreover, simple present tense was also used when he gives orders both to his subordinates under his department and to all citizens of the country, as seen in the example below: S#1"I now call on every Filipino to participate in this war by following the guidelines set by the national government and your local officials" (Mar.24 speech). Biber et al., (1999) noted that a present tense may refer to past or future events, a present state or present habitual behaviour. They additionally mentioned that verb in the present time is 70 to 80% commonly used verb. Hence, from the example depicted above, the use of the lexical verb "call" supplemented by the qualifying adverb "now," shows the present state which is the president's action to summon or catch the people's attention towards his command to participate and join in the government's fight against the pandemic. The verb "call" is a lexical verb in primary form and follows the imperative constructions (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002). Imperatives both as a mood and type of sentence according to function, refer to sentences that give command or request. Looking at the examples above, it can be depicted that they both speak of an on-going course of action, but the difference lies in the aspect of time of events. In #2, the present progressive "am therefore directing" was used to describe that PDu30 is currently instructing his government officials on what they are supposed to do in relation to a prior statement or an action that is about to happen as he speaks. This instruction or directives is an action or event that is about to take place immediately once it occurred. The linking adverb "therefore," qualifies the reason why the president gave such directives and an antecedent to a prior statement. In addition, it also subliminally infers that PDu30 is conveying a warning towards warranted violators as expressed in the prepositional phrase "against wayward officials." Compared to the present progressive in #3, the phrase "are marshalling and deploying" indicates that PDu30 is informing the listeners that the government is presently working to contain the pandemic, this means that as he speaks, an event or action is already in progress. These two statements (#2 and #3) are an indirect adage to the citizenry that, "hey, your government is here and they are working to protect you." Citing Biber et al (1999), present progressive aspect illustrates events that are presently on going (in the case of S#3) or events that are about to occur in not-so-distant time (in the case of S#2).
The 16% occurrences of simple future tense and future progressive (6%) in the oral texts signify the government's future plan to reinforce the present work that they are already doing to protect the Filipino people, assuring them that the government is working hard to address the problem at hand and that people have nothing to worry about. Future progressives were used particularly to entail that an expected event is about to happen if the proposed action is realized. For examples: S#4 "We will address all the different issues brought about by this pandemic as well as ensure the protection of all of our people, especially those who are serving in the frontlines." S#5 "Supplies of food, water and other essentials will be provided to you throughout this ordeal. Financial assistance will also be extended especially to those in the margins and the vulnerable groups." Statement #4 assures the people that the government will not take a halt, but rather face any problems that may arise upon implementation of the ECQ. Statement #5 evokes that Filipinos, particularly non-frontliners, have nothing to worry about as long as they abide by the government's guidelines on the ECQ because essential needs like financial ordeal will be provided and be given to them.
A combination of present progressive and simple future tense indicates that action currently in progress will be reinforced by the government. The statement below (S#6) implies PDu30s commitment to ease the burden, anxiety and fear of the people amidst the pandemic by stating that he and the government have concrete plans currently working (are also ramping up) and more plans are about to take place in the future (will also build, operate, and accredit). S#6 We are also ramping up our capacity to test more broadly to take a fuller and more accurate picture of the spread of COVID-19 in the country. We will also build, operate and accredit more medical facilities and laboratories in the coming weeks.
Generally, the use of tense and aspect in the covid19 speeches of PDu30 revealed three important facets: first, that the government will always be appreciative and in gratitude for the sacrifices of all the frontliners especially health workers. Second, that the government is already doing their job to address all the challenges amidst global pandemic, and lastly, that the government have established plans for the future while a current is already at work.

b. Modal Auxiliary Verbs
Meanwhile, the occurrences of modal auxiliary verbs in the covid19 speeches of PDu30, more than half of all the modal verbs is the use of "will". With a slightly 30% difference, it is followed by the use of "can," a roughly 16% and 6% with the use of "should" and "must" respectively. This is contrary to Takal's (2018) findings in which the "must" was the most frequently used modal verbs.
Duterte's repeated use of "will" is shaped by two levels of meanings. At the surface level, "will" was used to inform the public of his future actions, meaning it is the plan of the president. But at the deep level, it is a prediction of what is about to happen in the future, hence it is his discern warning towards corrupt people and people who take advantage of the situation to amass the huge budget laid by the government in respond to the pandemic. For example: S#7 "And for those who are really absconding the money, I will detain you, I said; and maybe I will release you pagkatapos ng (after the) COVID." Intrinsically, the statement above indicates the intention or volition of PDu30; while extrinsically it signifies a prediction that the intention expressed is likely to happen. President Duterte has been known to have less tolerance towards corruptions and officials who steal money from the government and from the people, hence, in most of his speeches, stern warning and threat are often spoken of.
Rubic-Remorosa (2018) cited that the frequent use of modal verbs in the speeches of PDu30 helped the president be able to persuade the audience to hand in their faith to the government in facing any problems that confront the nation. This is the same impact that the modal verbs have in the covid19 speeches of PDu30. Through the use of modal verbs, PDu30 was able to mobilize the whole country -opponents and allies -to be in sync with the government in containing the pandemic and help one another in these trying times.

c. Pronouns
The occurrences of the personal pronouns found in the oral texts revealed a more than 30% and 20% use of "your/you" and "I." Also moderately used pronouns are the "our" and "we or us." The prevailing use of second person pronouns you and your depict that PDu30 and the national government in general, are resolute and sincere in their commitment to solve problems and issues currently confronting the nation amidst a global pandemic. By directly talking to all Filipinos, it gives an impression of an honest candid conversation with the public. He directly talks to them to assure that the listeners receive and understand his message correctly.
Moreover, he specifically used you in explicitly expressing his gratitude and acknowledging the sacrifices invested by the front liners and some officials in helping the government fight the pandemic. His way of straightforwardly interacting with the public to give assurance, warn the violators, and give directives to both the government workers and to all Filipinos is to achieve interpersonal relations with them. For examples: First persons in plural form our, we, and us indicates sense of oneness or solidarity that regardless of their color, whether they follow the "yellow" (the Liberal party -opposition to the present administration), the Reds (leftist or communist) or are siding with the government; PDu30 stresses that they are all Filipinos, that they are all one in facing the national emergency. Particularly, we and us were used to representing PDu30 together with the government (S#12b), PDu30 with the people/Filipinos (S#12a), and PDu30 with the health workers (S#12c).
The choice of personal pronouns in political discourse is crucial as it provides interpersonal relationships between the speaker and the listener (Flowerdew, Li and Tran as cited in Takal, 2018). First person plural pronouns (our, we, us) indicate inclusivity and when it is used by a political leader in his/her speech, the we in particular, becomes about solidarity and shared responsibility (Rubic-Remorosa, 2018). Furthermore, the use of we representing the speaker alone denotes that the speaker/writer does not want the attention to him/herself, hence it gives an impersonal effect; while we that indicates inclusivity with the listener/reader the effect is more personal (Biber et al, 1999).

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Cohesion President Duterte's speech showed a cohesive flow of ideas as expressed with his use of references through the use of pronouns (as already discussed above), substitution, conjunctions, repetition and collocations. However, no use of ellipsis was found in the oral texts. Below are some examples for each category of cohesion.
S#13 "…I assure you that your efforts will be rewarded. Your heroism will not be forgotten." The statement #13 signifies the use of substitution. Rather than repeating the word "efforts," PDu30 substituted it to "heroism". The way it was substituted to a more dramatic and exalting term was perhaps PDu30's way of uplifting the morale of the healthcare workers and other front liners, inspiring them, and paying tribute to their sacrifices.
In terms of cohesive devices, the conjunctions and and but are already given to be commonly used. Nevertheless, the subordinating conjunctions therefore was used 5 times in the three speeches of PDu30. As shown in the example below, therefore was PDu30's way of accentuating and reiterating his stance, attitude and evaluation on an issue that because covid19 is an emergency that is faced by the whole country (his use of phrase "national proportions"), then it is only fitting that the national government will decide on the matter. PDu30's use of this cohesive device implies his decisiveness as a leader and the imperativeness of his message.
S#14 "I know you have the mandate to deal with emergencies affecting your localities. I was a Mayor myself, in case you have forgotten. But this is an emergency of national proportions, and therefore it is the national government that should call the shots." Reiteration is a common feature and perhaps a language style identity already of PDu30. From the oral texts analysed, repetition and synonymy are the common lexical cohesions used.
S#15 "I still count on everyone to also look out after their fellowmen ---their countrymen. S#16 "Ngayon, sa mga tao na binigyan ng (now, the people that were given) ---people tasked of distributing the money, distributing the food, distributing the relief goods, kindly do it." As can be seen, S#15 shows how fellowmen were synonymously used with the word countrymen. In S#16, "distributing" is repeated three times, showing a parallelism aspect of the statement, thus, emphasizing a strong command in which the addressee must abide. This repetition of words could be PDu30's intentional choice to clearly send his message that he meant business. It was also observed in his speeches that he used reiteration mostly when he is using the vernacular language; he rarely used it in English language. This strategy of reiteration using the first language of both the speaker and the listener puts more volume to the message and likelihood for the message to be grasped, accepted and realized by the addressees. Furthermore, PDu30 also repeated the word "LGU" thirteen (13) times and "war" as well as the word "frontliners," both four (4) times, in his speeches underscoring the big role that the Local Government Units (LGU) play and in assisting the frontliners (especially health workers) in this time of "war." The cohesion properties found in the speeches suggest the cohesiveness and coherence of PDu30's covid19 speeches. Especially notable is his fond of word repetition and reiteration. This implies his decisiveness as a leader because repeating words means to put emphasis on the proposition.

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Vocabulary The lexical choices of PDu30's covid19 speeches are loaded with words of gratitude, solidarity, resolution, commitment and threat; which are occasionally expressed through metaphor. One common metaphor found in the oral texts are the comparisons of covid19 pandemic as the enemy and covid19 quandaries as war (S#16).
S#17 To my fellow public servants, let us set aside our differences and work in solidarity to overcome this pandemic. We only have one common enemy and that is COVID-19.
Non-covid19 speeches of PDu30 in the past has metaphorically contends that the "enemy" of the state are the leftists and/or the opposition political party (Rubic-Remorosa, 2018; Medriano and De Vera, 2019). But in his recent speeches amidst a global pandemic, the enemy has shifted to what the general considers to be an invisible enemy. Labelling the pandemic as a common enemy and the predicaments associated with it as a war, contributes in effectively mobilizing the general public to do their own little way in protecting themselves and help the government fight the pandemic. This is augmented by labelling everyone as heroes and their small or big actions as heroism, this is a strategy to put confidence to people.
In addition, PDu30 carefully chose his words to imperatively convey his message of the seriousness of the situation. For instance, his use of the adjective "formidable" as modifier of the noun "enemy" implies that the enemy it not something to be taken lightly and the public cannot afford to hold their guard down, e.g. "Sa ikatlong linggo sa ating pakigbisog (in the third week of our fight) against a formidable enemy" Hence, everyone should abide by the guidelines set forth by the government in the implementation of the ECQ or in layman's term, community lockdown. Nonetheless, as much as PDu30 is bold in choice of vocabulary, contrastingly, he is also prudent in his words so it will not instill unwarranted fear to the public. For example, is the government's choice of the term "community quarantine" in replace of what it really is as "lockdown." This creates balance to his covid19 speeches, which can be described as sympathetic, assertive and compellable.
Metaphor as a rhetorical strategy has been commonly used in political speeches, mostly by Presidents as reported in some studies (Sabio and Lintao, 2018; Rubic-Remorosa 2018; Najarzadegan, Dabaghi and Eslami-Rasekh, 2017). Sabio and Lintao (2018) claimed that PDu30's use metaphor is to simply compare two ideas to facilitate clarity in his speech. This present paper holds the same interpretation that PDu30 used metaphor in his covid19 speeches to give the listeners an alternative term to better understand his message. •

Social Issues and Ideology
The second research question that this paper aims to address is to identify social issues and ideologies found in PDu30's covid19 speeches. Similar to the findings of Rubic-Remorosa (2018) are the re-current issues of socio-economic and corruption. These two social issues have been consistently part of almost all of PDu30's speeches. However, this present paper also identified other issues that arise only during the period of ECQ, hence, should be idealized based on the context. The social issues are politicking, red tape, abuse of power, and suspension of socio-economic activities.
Politicking refers to a person engaged in political activities (wordweb dictionary). A closer analysis of the S#18 below, politicking was explicitly mentioned by PDu30 in the second statement, while its context and meaning can be referred back to the first statement. In this context, politicking means LGU officials who are engaged in corruption and dishonesty by hiding or being selective in the distribution of the relief goods which are intended to be given to all Filipinos, particularly the poorest of the poor.
S#18 "Sabi ko huwag ngayon (I said not now). Huwag na huwag kayong mandaya, mangurakot at taguin 'yung mga pagkain at 'yung iba hindi bigyan kasi (never ever do cheating, corruption, and hide the food and the others were not given because)… You know, people sometimes think that they own whatever they receive from government. This is not yours, neither is it mine.
Pero kung mamulitika ka tapos mabalitaan ko na 'yan ang nagawa mo (but if you are politicking and then l found that you are doing it), I will suspend you ora mismo (immediately). And for those who are really absconding the money, I will detain you, I said; and maybe I will release you pagkatapos ng (after the) COVID." As mentioned earlier, LGU was mentioned 16 times in the three covid19 speeches of PDu30. This repetition in citing the LGUs is the speaker's communicative strategy to send warning to all LGU officials that he does not tolerate corrupt and dishonest local leaders.
Relevant to politicking in times of pandemic is the issue of the abuse of power and red tapes. Two issues that PDu30 also abhors. In his previous speeches prior to covid19 pandemic, PDu30 has already expressed his dissent in red tapes in the bureaucracy, more so that he detests it in this time of a national emergency when the socio-economic activities were temporarily suspended to lessen the movement of people and be able to contain the spread of the virus. He often emphasizes the fast transactions of papers. PDu30 made himself clear that he does not want red tapes, and wants it cut. He described red tapes as those employees who like to delay government transactions, those who are lazy in doing their work and ask irrelevant questions that only delays the process of the delivery of goods and services to the people.
The abuse of authority is another politicking that he dislikes. PDu30 laid down the limits and standards to the power bestowed upon the local governments in the implementation of the ECQ. That despite the imposed lockdown, certain conditions may allow for the passing of some vehicles in accordance with the national government's guidelines. However, going beyond the limitations is already abuse of authority as far as the president is concerned.
S#21 …At tayo'y hirap sa pera, sa medical supplies, sa lahat. Eh dati ho naman talagang kulang ang pera natin at kulang ang medical supplies. At hindi lang ho tayo, pati 'yung Amerika ganun rin kasi hindi natin akalain buong mundo na ganun kabilis dalawang araw lang, after receiving the advice from China, the crisis was already here: COVID-19. (…and we have difficulty with money, with medical supplies, and with everything. Well, even before, our money is really not enough and we have shortage of medical supplies. And it is not only us, even the America it is the same because we never thought (that it is) the whole world already, that is how fast it is, just two days.) In terms of ideology, PDu30 repeatedly stressed and promoted the importance of solidarity and service to the country and fellowmen in times of crisis. As seen in his statement below #22, the pronoun "we" signals inclusivity of all Filipinos, supporters or not of the president.
S#22 "Let it be said that, in the hour of our country's greatest need, we all looked out for and helped each other." This also confirms the findings of Quijano and Bulusan (2020) on the use of appeal to emotion in the speeches of Presidents Duterte, Aquino and Arroyo. Appeal to emotion is liken to covid19 speeches of PDu30 where he encourages and inspires people to render service to their fellow by appealing to their emotions that they are all Filipinos, using terms like "fellowmen" and "countrymen."

Conclusion
This paper shed light on the linguistic features and its interpersonal meanings as well as the social issues found in the covid19 speeches of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte using the theoretical lens of the Systemic Functional Linguistics of Halliday and Matthiessen (2014).
Overall, PDu30's linguistic choices revealed his impartiality and emphasizes that politics has no room given the circumstances.
His language use was heavily invested in the promotion of solidarity and service to the public. He categorically called for unity with the opposition and other dissenters (at least for the time being). He underscores that the way to solve the challenges brought by the global pandemic is the unanimity of the country. While his language choice showed his vulnerability, he also manifested his resolve as the country's leader by positioning himself as the person in-charge of certain additional powers granted to him by the congress, thus, disobedience to his commands (at least in times of pandemic) will have its consequence.
From these findings, we can surmise that the notion of ideology may not always be associated with negative connotations and that political speeches of leaders are not often one-sided. Rather, when the situation calls for it, like in time of pandemic, a political leader can stand as the voice of unity. This however may not be an automatic accepted deal among his critics and dissenters.
Critical discourse analysis of a political speech is an approached that should be dealt with critically and contextually. To be critical in the analysis is to have a closer look at the lexico-grammar and their discourse functions. Moreover, the conclusion of analysis cannot be generalized because to effectively arrive at an evaluation or judgement is by taking into consideration the context. For example, some of the social issues found in the covid19 speeches of President Duterte are the same issues (e.g. corruption, red tapes) he pronounced in his previous speeches prior to the global pandemic. However, these issues differ in context. This affirms the contention of Fairclough (1995) on social contexts and van Dijk's (2009) notion of context as subjective, by definition. Moreover, beyond information-building and ideology conveying, political speeches are also solidarity-advocating.