Politics in Malaysia: A Discourse Perspective

Abstract

Our chapter introduces Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance. Grounded in Discourse Studies, this edited volume is designed to enrich research on Malaysian political discourse. It examines how political actors employ language to legitimise their governance in distinct contexts. The chapter briefly reviews political parties in Malaysia, which establishes the contours of political culture. Subsequently, it presents an overview of linguistic research in political discourse in the last two decades in Malaysia, which establishes the diversity of studies in linguistic analysis. The chapter describes the other chapters in this volume that research spoken, print and digital texts in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. These chapters pursue an empirical study of language features and strategies about contemporary concerns in Malaysia. Our chapter ends by offering the future directions of research, where potential avenues could be explored.