Voices of Economic Competence: Legitimizing the Government in Federal Budget Speeches

Abstract

Budget speeches are an overview of public economic initiatives and can anticipate revenues, expenditures, policies, and activities. These speeches enable a government to discursively legitimize economic competence. While legitimation can be achieved by the representation and evaluation of economic initiatives, intertextuality should also be analyzed because the use of voices helps or hinders legitimation. The chapter explores how the Barisan Nasional (BN) government legitimized its economic competence through intertextual voicing. It outlines the source and engagement of voices and operationalizes a method that involves five sequential stages. The chapter analyzes an archive of Malaysian federal budget speeches from 2010 to 2018. The analysis discloses various instances of intertextual voicing because the speeches articulate voices in economics, politics, and religion. The choice of voices is shaped by the Malaysian context. Intertextual voicing legitimizes BN through moralization and authorization. The voices can be considered as voices of economic competence because economic, political, and religious voices discursively legitimize actions and decisions for the economy. Intertextual voicing serves ideological purposes because it perpetuates government economic agency. In budget speeches, BN promotes itself as indispensable to Malaysian development, and it should consequently continue to govern the country. These speeches then become part of the genres that validate BN.