The present volume comprises studies that focus on the concept of legitimation and
its manifestations in language use. They examine relevant sociopolitical aspects as
reflected in spoken, printed and digital texts in Malaysian political discourse between
2008 and 2020. Legitimation is an essential element of any political discourse which
makes this volume relevant both to a broad spectrum of scholars and the general
public.
While there is no unitary definition of the concept, in most research the notion
of legitimation is explained as a process of justification of a particular norm, belief
and/or performance by actors holding power and/or claiming authority. Legitimation
is one of the core concepts in social sciences used in theorising political governance,
that is, political authority and political order (c.f. Biego´n [2016] for an overview).
Drawing on Weber´s conceptualisation of legitimacy (2019), several dimensions
of legitimation are particularly considered in research studies: next to the attitudinal
(people have to believe in the rightfulness of a particular legitimate order) and
behavioural (when they believe that particular order is legitimate, they can act in
order to comply with it) dimensions, one of the most important roles is attributed
to communication (Schneider, Nullmeier & Hurrelmann, 2007). The nexus between
political communication and legitimacy is elaborated especially in theories of democracy
(Otfried & Sarcinelli, 1998, p. 253; Sarcinelli, 2013, p. 93), which view these
two features of political discourse as mutually dependent. If legitimacy is conveyed
first and foremost through communication, then it is language as one of the most
important means of communication that has to be included when analysing legitimation
processes. At this intersection, political sciences and linguistics meet, calling
for a cross-disciplinary view on legitimation as "a political-linguistic concept" (Cap,
2008, p. 22).
