A Study On The Corporate “Legitimation” Discourse In U.S.Congressional Committee Hearings From The Perspective Of Communication Action Theory

Discursive legitimation has been a hot topic in the field of linguistics in recent years.Past researches on it have covered a variety of discourse categories,but the most attention has been paid to political discourse.Although the importance of institutional discourse has been increasingly emphasized by scholars,past studies have mostly focused on one-way static discourse forms such as CSR reports,and less research has been conducted on dynamic use of discursive legitimation strategy in the context of real-time dialogue.This study will measure the discursive legitimation strategies and their specific language expressions used by the four Internet companies in a series of hearings entitled “Protecting Kids Online” based on the four universal validity claims under the Theory of Communication Action,in order to judge whether their interactional purpose of constructing and maintaining legitimacy is successfully achieved.As for the findings,in general,the two most used strategies by all four representatives were rationalization and moral evaluation,and in particular,the means-orientation and goal-orientation sub-strategies under it were often used in combination to describe the specific purpose,intention,and efforts they made.In addition,the four representatives had certain preferences in strategy selection: 1)Tik Tok representative Beckerman placed less emphasis on empathization strategy and instead focused on the use of circumlocution strategy;2)Snapchat representative Stout was more comprehensive and balanced than the other three in the use of discursive legitimation strategy.From the results of the validity analysis,all four representatives’ language use satisfied the truthfulness claim well.In terms of comprehensibility claim,correctness claim,and sincerity claim,Stout’s language use was comparatively appropriate and helped achieving the purpose of defending the legitimacy of the company and its business practices relatively well;the other three’s language use more or less failed to meet the three validity claims,while Beckerman left an image of being uncooperative and insincere in the minds of the senators and the audience due to his inappropriate strategy and language use.Based on the results,the researcher explored the potential causes of the similarities and differences in the four representatives’ strategy use.The similarity lies in the fact that different strategies perform different functions,and the use of rationalization can better help the representatives to explain the corporate behavior in detail.The differences are mainly from the following three aspects: 1)given the specific operation and profit model of these companies,the four representatives will have different strategy preferences when facing issues of interest;2)Tik Tok’s Chinese background has attracted fierce accusations from the senators.Beckerman’s preference is to choose circumlocution strategy to avoid answering unfavorable questions head-on;3)the social status occupied by social groups of different genders may also be the underlying reason for the use difference.All in all,this study not only enriches the research in the field of hearing and corporate discourse,and confirms the strong explanatory power of Habermas’ philosophical ideas on language for the mechanism of communication and coordination in discourse practice,but also gives some enlightenment for Chinese companies participating in hearing in the future.