This open access book examines Malaysian politics using a linguistic perspective. It explores how language serves to (de)legitimise governance, and its subsequent policies and activities in Malaysia. Grounded in discourse studies, this edited volume presents research on the discourses produced by and on Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional from 2008 to 2020, studying how political actors (de)legitimise their governance through discursive means. The thirteen original chapters select spoken, print and digital texts in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and deploy varied theoretical and methodological approaches. Their linguistic analysis unearths the language features and strategies that facilitate (de)legitimation. It shows how political actors shape the discursive representation and evaluation of multiple concerns in Malaysia. Consequently, Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance improves our understanding of contemporary Malaysian political discourse. It is of interest to graduates and researchers in the field of discourse studies, seeking to understand the discursive contours of politics in this developing Asian country.

This open access book examines Malaysian politics using a linguistic perspective. It explores how language serves to (de)legitimise governance, and its subsequent policies and activities in Malaysia. Grounded in discourse studies, this edited volume presents research on the discourses produced by and on Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional from 2008 to 2020, studying how political actors (de)legitimise their governance through discursive means. The thirteen original chapters select spoken, print and digital texts in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and deploy varied theoretical and methodological approaches. Their linguistic analysis unearths the language features and strategies that facilitate (de)legitimation. It shows how political actors shape the discursive representation and evaluation of multiple concerns in Malaysia. Consequently, Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance improves our understanding of contemporary Malaysian political discourse. It is of interest to graduates and researchers in the field of discourse studies, seeking to understand the discursive contours of politics in this developing Asian country.

References pp. 133-137.

This monograph examines the rhetorical nature and function of representations of the future in political discourse, focusing on political actors’ use of hegemonic images of future “reality” to achieve their political goals. It argues that a key ideological dimension of political rhetoric lies in politicians’ use of projections of the future to legitimate policies and actions. This argument is grounded in systemic-functional and critical discourse analyses of the “Bush Doctrine,” the U.S. policy response to the September 11 terrorist attacks which sanctioned a “preemptive” military posture. By focusing on the discursive construction of the future, this project addresses a lacunae in critical discourse studies and calls attention to the crucial role that the discourse and practice of “futurology” has played in post-Cold War politics and society. It will be of value to scholars interested in the discourses of politics, the “war on terror,” U.S. national security, and futurology.

How can recent developments in post-structuralist, post-Marxist, and psychoanalytical theory actually inform ongoing empirical research? What are the appropriate methods and research strategies for conducting research in discourse theory and analysis? How can concepts such as hegemony, identity, the imaginary, dislocation, and empty signifiers illuminate key aspects of contemporary society and politics? This pathbreaking and multi-focal book contains a clear introductory statement of the theoretical approach used, and concludes with an assessment of the future directions of discourse theory in the social sciences.

The discursive construction of identity is often under the control of the dominant forces in society and frequently results in forms of manipulation and abuse. This awareness led to the celebration of the First International Conference on CDA (València 2004), where over three-hundred academics working in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis became actively engaged in this important issue. The seven studies included in this volume have been selected as representative of those areas of human experience that have been given most intellectual attention and considered to be in fact in need for critical unravelling. Ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms, patriotic discourse construction in Chinese readers, the denial of Palestinian identity in schoolbooks, the diverse constructions of European identities, Arabs constructing themselves on the worldwide web, identity construction in sexual assault trials, the representations of a dangerous ‘other’ in cases of PLWHAs, are the contextual perspectives embraced in this book to account for forms of power abuse in the discursive construction of identities.

This book proposes a critical public relations approach to analyzing crisis communication with Malaysia Airlines flight 370 (MH370) disappearance (2014-2018) as a case study. It examines the discursive process of Malaysia’s crisis response and image building, tracing Malaysia Airlines during the immediate response and the Malaysian establishment until the official suspension of the underwater search. The study features a critical discourse analysis of 84 national media texts and 85 response statements, focusing on three aspects: the national media representations of Malaysia’s image, the national carrier and the government’s rhetorical strategies of delivering stances and actions, and the dynamic process of image reconstruction and national recovery. The present project contributes to the current research area by integrating both linguistic and public relations perspectives, and more importantly, by highlighting the ideological impact instead of merely behavioral effectiveness in modern communication research. Target readers may find their interest in corporate crisis communication, critical inquiry about political public relations, and the MH370 incident in general.

The Enlightenment theorists involved in the public/private debate exposed the logical fallacies of theology and the philosophical weaknesses of metaphysics but left little room for understanding contemporary modes of consumption. What does it mean to be a consumer in the early 21st century? Do modern markets provide real choices for consumers in neoliberal capitalist democracies? Or are consumers ironically slaves to their own patterns of consumption? Rejecting Habermas' conceptualizations in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991), Rappa offers an examination of modernity and consumption with a non-Marxist, modernity-Resistance-theoretical frame (mRf). He argues that late modernity — the ethos, experience, and consciousness of global and technological transformation today — is not about the fusion of “public and private” spaces. Rather, modernity and consumption involves the deep penetration of private space by public space to the extent that private space becomes dependent, conditional, and decrepit. The “Private” has become contingent on the “Public”. Decisions about what to consume no longer reflect the mindful choices of private, interest-seeking, and wealth-maximizing individuals but reveal a new kind of public control through foundational images of success, failure, horror, violence, and hope.

In recent years a set of radical new approaches to public policy has been developing. These approaches, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In his major new book Frank Fischer brings together this new work for the first time and critically examines it. In an accessible way he describes the theoretical, methodological, and political requirements and implications of the new "post-empiricist" approach to public policy. The volume includes a discussion of the social construction of policy problems, the role of interpretation and narrative analysis in policy inquiry, the dialectics of policy argumentation, and the uses of participatory policy analysis. The book will be required reading for anyone studying, researching, or formulating public policy.

This collection makes the case for existing critical discourse analysis theory and methods to meaningfully engage with the communicative parameters, power dynamics, and technological affordances of contemporary digital spaces. This book lends a critical focus on discursive practices operating through the paradigm of social media communication, addressing the crucial interface of discourse and the participatory web with disciplinary rigour and a well-balanced focus. This volume features chapters highlighting a diverse range of methods, including multi-sited ethnography, multimodality, argumentation studies, and topic modelling, as applied to a global range of case studies to present a holistic portrait of the latest methodological and theoretical debates in this space. The collection demonstrates the many and pervasive impacts of digital mediation on established discursive practices that are (re-)shaping existing social values, practices, and demands. In so doing, the collection advocates for a new tradition in critical discourse research, one which is rigorous in accounting for both solid discursive frameworks and the evolving complexity of digital platforms, and which triangulates methodologies in order to fully make sense of contemporary discursive practices and power relations on the online–offline continuum. This collection will be of interest to students and scholars in critical discourse studies, digital communication, media studies, and anthropology.