Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia

Legitimising Governance

Kumaran Rajandran, Charity Lee

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9789811953330
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811953347
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This open access book examinesMalaysianpolitics 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.Itisof interest to graduates and researchers in the field of discourse studies, seeking to understand the discursive contours of politics in this developing Asian country.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Politics in Malaysia: A Discourse Perspective
• 2. The Interplay of Race, Religion and Royalty in Contemporary Malaysian Politics
• 3. Voices of Economic Competence: Legitimizing the Government in Federal Budget Speeches
• 4. Legitimising Governance Through Vocational Roles: A Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Budget Speeches
• 5. (De)legitimizing the 2021 Budget Allocation for Tamil Schools in a Talk Show
• 6. Seeking Legitimation in Political Uncertainties: Reforming the Media
• 7. Framing the Tanjung Piai By-Election in Multilingual Malaysian Newspapers
• 8. ‘Remember Our Race, Our Religion and Our Progeny’: An Argumentation Analysis of Malay-Language Newspapers During General Election Campaigns
• 9. Contesting Views in the Representation of ICERD Ratification in English Language Newspapers
• 10. (De)legitimation Strategies in the Media Statements of Women’s Rights Organisations
• 11. Exploring Malaysia’s 2021 Budget through Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies: (De)legitimation in Online News
• 12. #KitaJagaKita: (De)legitimising the Government During the 2020 Movement Control Order
• 13. Conceptualizing Money Laundering in the 1MDB Scandal: An Analysis of Metaphors in The Sarawak Report