The PhD thesis entitled “Persuasion strategies and ideological categories in the World Health Organization  discussions about COVID-19” was discussed in the Department of English at the College of Arts at the University of Basrah.

The thesis presented by researcher Nagham Jaafar Hussein Khalaf included five chapters that dealt with (the introductions to the thesis, the theoretical aspect, the research methodology, the practical aspect of the analysis, results, conclusions, and recommendations).

The thesis aims to investigate and identify persuasive strategies and underlying ideologies embodied in the World Health Organization discussions about COVID-19.
The current study addressed the ideological categories of van Dijk's three-dimensional model and the persuasive strategies of Larson's three-dimensional model. When it comes to analyzing, examining, interpreting, and justifying the institutional discourse of the World Health Organization, especially regarding COVID-19, both approaches are fruitful and highly beneficial. They can achieve very important results by providing the institutional analyst or discourse analyst with suitable and useful tools to assist in describing, analyzing, interpreting, and justifying the discourse.

It is worth mentioning that the World Health Organization focuses more on scientific perspectives rather than on social, psychological, cognitive, and cultural perspectives. This leads to a decrease in the use of strategies that address people's emotions and passions, which could have had either a positive or negative impact on their lives.