Strategies of legitimization in political discourse: From words to actions

Abstract

From an interdisciplinary framework anchored theoretically in Critical Discourse Analysis and using analytical tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics, this article accounts for a crucial use of language in society: the process of legitimization. This article explains specific linguistic ways in which language represents an instrument of control (Hodge and Kress, 1993: 6) and manifests symbolic power (Bourdieu, 2001) in discourse and society. Taking into account previous studies on legitimization (i.e. Martín Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Dijk, 2005; Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2007, 2008; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999), this particular work develops and proposes some key strategies of legitimization employed by social actors to justify courses of action. The strategies of legitimization can be used individually or in combination with others, and justify social practices through: (1) emotions (particularly fear), (2) a hypothetical future, (3) rationality, (4) voices of expertise and (5) altruism. This article explains how these strategies are linguistically constructed and shaped. This study explains the use of these discursive structures and strategies through examples of speeches given by leaders with differing ideologies, specifically George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in two different armed conflicts, Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2009), to underline their justifications of military presence in the notorious ‘War on Terror’.

Legitimation Analysis: Exploring Decision-Making and Power in Hot Bench

“…While previous studies on legitimation have focused on post 9/11 history (Dunmire, 2009), politicians' specific linguistic structures (Reyes, 2011), Middle East military strategies (Oddo, 2011), higher education (Aula & Tienari 2011), and European identity (Vaara, 2014), to name a few, this study has focused on legal discourse by examining verbal exchanges among judges during their deliberation of verdicts in a popular reality TV program, Hot Bench. In the selected deliberation processes examined, three broad concepts are intensified by the judges, namely, authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization.…”

“…Dunmire (2009) examines and disrupts normal ways of examining 9/11 narratives to expose historical and motivational contexts by elaborating on the ways such potential security threats to America is justified on the premise of legitimation. Reyes (2011) references legitimation to politicians' use of power through analyzing complex and simple syntactic structures and direct, and indirect speech while Oddo (2011) uses legitimation to demonstrate the ways that permit military intervention in Middle East through 'ideological polarization' and 'moralized lexico-grammatical structures' (Oddo, 2011, p. 308). In the context of higher education, Aula and Tienari (2011) indexed legitimation to the manifestations of "imaginary incentives and predictions of an inevitable future" (p.7) among universities in their approach towards becoming internationalized.…”

“…Legitimation seeks to provide overt, embedded, and sometimes implicit reasons for completing actions, practices, or activities. Therefore, with van Leeuwen's (2007) legitimation framework, studies using legitimation have already begun to be intensified across disciplines, that includes, but are not limited to business, social management, politics, and newspaper discourses (see for instance Aula & Tienari, 2011;Dunmire, 2009;Oddo, 2011;Reyes, 2011;Vaara, 2014). In exploring the judges' process of making decisions, such richness in judges' elaborations provide 'the intricate interconnections' between social and legal practices and 'discourses that legitimize them' (Van Leeuwen, 2007, p. 111).…”

Naming the combatants of the colombian armed conflict in news broadcasts: the discursive positioning of journalists

“…The label orientates the way in which the event or social actor is interpreted (Branca-Rosoff, 2007;Moirand, 2009;Siblot, 2007). The groups conducting a war, such as politicians or armed groups, know and are aware of the fact that the terms and the expressions they use to talk to journalists could influence the way they are seen by audiences and whether or not the war is seen as legitimate (Reyes, 2011). For instance, regarding their political motivations, guerrilla groups refer to themselves as 'rebels' or 'insurgents', while their adversary (the military and the Colombian government) seeks to delegitimize these groups with expressions such as '(narco)terrorist' .…”

A Critical Discourse Study of a German Children’s Book Series: Representation of Social Actors and Construction of Legitimation

“…A number of researchers (e.g., Kedves, 2016;Pinton, 2013;Reyes, 2011) have made use of van Leeuwen's (2007Leeuwen's ( , 2008 framework in their research. For instance, Kedves (2016) investigated how legitimation is constructed in discourse of "online crowdfunding" (i.e., raising funds for projects by getting in touch with prospective sponsors via the Internet and persuading them to make contributions).…”