Legitimizing Government through Discursive Strategies in Malaysian Politics.

By Kumaran Rajandran

The present volume comprises studies that focus on the concept of legitimation and

its manifestations in language use. They examine relevant sociopolitical aspects as

reflected in spoken, printed and digital texts in Malaysian political discourse between

2008 and 2020. Legitimation is an essential element of any political discourse which

makes this volume relevant both to a broad spectrum of scholars and the general

public.

While there is no unitary definition of the concept, in most research the notion

of legitimation is explained as a process of justification of a particular norm, belief

and/or performance by actors holding power and/or claiming authority. Legitimation

is one of the core concepts in social sciences used in theorising political governance,

that is, political authority and political order (c.f. Biego n 2016] for an overview).

Drawing on Weber s conceptualisation of legitimacy (2019), several dimensions

of legitimation are particularly considered in research studies: next to the attitudinal

(people have to believe in the rightfulness of a particular legitimate order) and

behavioural (when they believe that particular order is legitimate, they can act in

order to comply with it) dimensions, one of the most important roles is attributed

to communication (Schneider, Nullmeier & Hurrelmann, 2007). The nexus between

political communication and legitimacy is elaborated especially in theories of democracy

(Otfried & Sarcinelli, 1998, p. 253; Sarcinelli, 2013, p. 93), which view these

two features of political discourse as mutually dependent. If legitimacy is conveyed

first and foremost through communication, then it is language as one of the most

important means of communication that has to be included when analysing legitimation

processes. At this intersection, political sciences and linguistics meet, calling

for a cross-disciplinary view on legitimation as "a political-linguistic concept" (Cap,

2008, p. 22).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1835208304
• ISBN13: 9781835208304
• Release Date: August 2023
• Publisher: Indie Pub
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"