“There was a Problem, and it was Solved!”: Legitimating the Expulsion of `Illegal' Migrants in Spanish Parliamentary Discourse

Abstract

In this article we examine some discursive aspects of political legitimation by analyzing the speech of the Spanish Secretary of the Interior, Mayor Oreja; on the occasion of a military-style expulsion of a group of African `illegal' migrants from Melilla—the Spanish enclave in Morocco—in the summer of 1996. After a theoretical analysis of legitimation, we study three levels of legitimation: (a) pragmatic: various strategies of the justification of controversial official actions; (b) semantic: the ways a discourse represents its partisan view of the events or properties of actors as `true' or as the `facts'; and (c) sociopolitical: the way official discourse self-legitimates itself as authoritative and delegitimates alternative discourses. For these various aspects of legitimation, several levels of discursive structure (style, grammar, rhetoric, semantic moves, etc.) are examined in some detail.

A Recursive Perspective on Discursive Legitimation and Organizational Action in Mergers and Acquisitions

“…Central here is the close linkage between the legitimacy of specific actions and the power positions of social actors (Rojo and van Dijk 1997). Accordingly, one can often distinguish sociopolitical struggles for legitimation and delegitimation (Rojo andvan Dijk 1997, Vaara et al 2006).…”

“…Legitimation is the creation of a sense of positive, beneficial, ethical, understandable, necessary, or otherwise acceptable action in a specific setting (van Dijk 1998, van Leeuwen andWodak 1999). Delegitimation in turn means establishing a sense of negative, morally reprehensible, or otherwise unacceptable action or overall state of affairs (Rojo andvan Dijk 1997, van Leeuwen andWodak 1999). Delegitimation may thus be resistance to legitimation in situations such as merger announcements (Demers et al 2003).…”

“…Accordingly, one can often distinguish sociopolitical struggles for legitimation and delegitimation (Rojo andvan Dijk 1997, Vaara et al 2006). Thus, legitimation involves more or less conscious discursive strategizing.…”

“…From a critical perspective, discursive legitimation deals with power and is inherently political in nature (Rojo andvan Dijk 1997, van Leeuwen andWodak 1999).…”

Discursive (de)legitimation of a contested Finnish greenfield investment project in Latin America

“…From a discursive perspective, it is the situated speech acts in which a specific corporate undertaking is questioned or justified that are considered ''moments of (de)legitimation'' (see Hybels, 1995, p. 245). Both the criticism (acts of delegitimation) and the defensive responses to the critique (acts of (re)legitimation) are largely discursive and hence in need of detailed discursive analysis (Rojo & Van Dijk, 1997).…”