Legitimation Strategies In U.S. Counter-terrorism Discourse

In the aftermath of September 11 terrorist attacks,counter-terrorism discourse has gradually become a key theme of Critical Discourse Studies.Most of the existing studies,in terms of the “discourse-historical” approach,discuss the social,cultural and political contexts of legitimation,and the strategies employed,but are lack of the explanation of cognitive function mechanism behind legitimation strategies.This study further analyzes how legitimation strategies cognitively construct the mental models of recipients,and the mechanism of mental models.This study utilizes van Dijk's(2015)Discourse-Cognition-Society triangle approach,to analyze macro and micro legitimation structures and strategies employed in the counter-terrorism discourse of the U.S.government with concrete extracts from Country Reports on Terrorism(2001-2016).Van Dijk(2015)initiated sociocognitive approach to explain cognitive components in legitimation discourse.He states that the ideologies hidden in the discourse not only reflect one's belief,but have the function of persuasion(sometimes manipulation)as well.Therefore,political discourse is employed to alter an individual's attitudes and opinions,which is a typical type of manipulation closely related to ideology.In this process,various discursive strategies are wielded to manipulate public ideology,and then construct consensus among them.As the study shows,the basic and fundamental strategy employed by the U.S.government is the “positive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation” strategy.And the legitimation strategies employed in the U.S.counter-terrorism discourse could be generally divided into four groups,namely authority,moral evaluation,rationalization,and mythopoesis.Most of the strategies are employed to construct the positive image of Our-group,with intentional ignorance of defects.With the discursive construction and framing of polarization,public opinions are influenced and instilled,and counter-terrorism operations and policies of the U.S.government thereupon become more likely to be accepted and endorsed.