Legitimation Strategies in Political Rhetoric: Examples From Presidential Speeches on Covid-19

Abstract

Heads of states are currently focusing on containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic-commonly called Covid-19, and grappling with a series of strategies for addressing the pandemic. Political discourse concerning Covid-19 can be examined to better understand the ideology of the speaker and its impact on the audience. In this paper, we use Van Leeuwen’s (2007) and Van Leeuwen and Wodak’s (1999) legitimation strategies that social actors use to justify courses of action/political decisions in a critical discourse analysis approach. Drawing on presidential speeches specifically made by Donald Trump (USA) and Xi Jinping (China), this paper elucidates how legitimation strategies are linguistically constituted and fashioned to justify the leaders’ particular policy decisions and actions for controlling and containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, thus achieving their political goals.