Constrained chronotopic agency and embodied scaling in Zelensky’s wartime speeches

Abstract This study examines how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime speeches (2022–2024) strategically mobilize chronotopes and scalar configurations to construct political legitimacy, forge transnational alliances, and choreograph diplomatic action under geopolitical duress. Synergizing linguistic anthropology, narrative theory, and multimodal discourse analysis, it introduces two original concepts, namely constrained chronotopic agency and embodied scaling to theorize how leaders navigate conflicting temporalities and spatialities in high-stakes diplomacy. Through a close analysis of key addresses to global institutions, it demonstrates how Zelensky’s speeches function as heterochronic performances , fusing historical analogies, present-tense urgency, and projected futures to rescale Ukraine’s local struggle into a globally resonant moral imperative. The multimodal analytical framework pursued in the current research work reveals how Zelensky’s rhetoric leverages conventional symbols, orientational cues, and contextual backdrops to align divergent audiences with Ukraine’s cause. The findings advance debates on chronotopes, scale, and agency showing how diplomatic discourse operates not merely through textual persuasion but through real-time, embodied chronotopic worldmaking, where control over time and space becomes a form of symbolic warfare.