The strategic communication. A content analysis of two different leaders’ discourses

Communication and interaction between Ego and Alter are fundamental processes of social action since the speaker (Ego), and the listener (Alter) refer to the same world, sharing a conventional interpretation of reality. In this respect, every communication act is defined by those linguistic interactions in which all participants pursue their actions and strategies with the use of mutual expressions. Moreover, some interactions are characterized by perlocutive purposes or by those verbal interactions that, through communication, aim to produce a change in the audience (in this regard, according to the German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, actions are defined as strategic). For this reason, going more into details into this work, the objective of our research is to carry out a comparative analysis concerning the theory of communication actions using, as an example, the texts of two different religious leaders: Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. We examined the Angelus of the two Popes through the content analysis in order to detect the styles of two different modus operandi and to understand two particular communication strategies. In this sense, the analysis of these -ecclesiastical policies. of the two Popes will take into consideration the Angelus recited in the respective first three years of the Pontificate. Therefore, it will be possible to highlight and compare the topics addressed and investigate the type of strategic actions. In this perspective, content analysis reveals its usefulness, combining two elements that are difficult to isolate in the understanding of a communication process (the source and the message transmitted) and it also reveals itself as one valuable tool for the analysis of both cultural and social messages.