A Study Of Legitimization Of Political Discourse Based On The Proximization Theory

In the practice of political discourse,speakers usually use various discourse strategies to legitimize their goals,actions and policies.This thesis takes 59 political discourses on security which are published from 2018 to 2020 in the website of the department of homeland security as the corpus to explore the process of realizing the legitimization of political policies or actions.Critical discourse analysis(CDA)is an essential approach to analyze political discourse.However,the traditional CDA doesn’t focus on the importance of cognitive factors and social factors in discourse communication.Furthermore,the traditional CDA only focuses on the process of discourse construction,but not the process of discourse construal.Based on Cap’s Proximization Theory and van Dijk’s Social-cognitive Model,an analytical model of legitimization used in political discourse is proposed by Wu Jianguo.This thesis adopts this model to study the realization of legitimization of political policies or actions from discourse construction dimension and discourse construal dimension.This thesis tries to answer three questions: 1.What are the lexical-grammatical items used to realize proximization in political discourse? 2.What are the proximization strategies used to realize the legitimization of political policies or actions in political discourse? 3.What are the social cognitive factors that influence the realization of legitimization in political discourse? In the discourse construction dimension,according to Cap’s standards of lexical-grammatical items,the thesis picks out the key lexical-grammatical items of each proximization strategy,and the frequency of each item is counted through the Antconc software.Then,this thesis explains how the legitimization strategy is used to legitimate the policy or action.In the discourse construal dimension,based on the Social-cognitive Model,the thesis analyzes the recipients’ social cognition to reveal the underlying reasons why the legitimization of the policy or action is realized.It is found that,in the discourse construction dimension,political discourses on security mainly emphasize the sharp distinction between the positive inside-the-deictic-center entities(IDCs)and the negative outside-the-deictic-center entities(ODCs).And through the proximization strategies,the speakers proximize the threat,tragedy,death,injuries,loss of property,attack,harm and damage caused by ODCs to IDCs from three perspectives,that is,space,time and axiology.All these proximization strategies are used to arouse a sense of urgency and crisis among IDCs to make their policies legitimate.In the discourse construal dimension,the underlying reason for achieving legitimization is IDCs’ subjective understanding of political discourse based on their social cognition.In other words,people’s cultural knowledge,belief,attitude and ideology play an essential role in achieving legitimization.This thesis analyses the realization of legitimization of political discourse from a new perspective.And this thesis hopes to help the recipients of political discourse form critical thinking to better understand political discourse and its real intention.