A critical discourse analysis approach to legitimization strategies: Obama’s speeches on Libya in focus

A great many studies of Political Discourse Analysis deal with the language of professional politicians and political institutions. The politicians’ main goal in political discourse is to persuade the audience of the validity of their claims. Different experts have classified these strategic functions differently. One of the best classifications has been proposed by Reyes (2011). He proposes five key strategies of legitimization employed by social actors to justify course of action through: 1) emotions (particularly fear), (2) a hypothetical future, (3) rationality, (4) voices of expertise and (5) altruism. In this paper the researcher tries to have a look over legitimization strategies in the political discourse of Barack Obama on Libya within the framework employed by Reyes (2011).

Keywords:

critical discourse analysis , political discourse analysis , legitimization strategies , Reyes’ model