Proximisation, Common Ground, and Assertion-Based Patterns for Legitimisation in Political Discourse

Abstract

This methodological-critical paper aims to investigate the interplay between three prime strategies for legitimisation of the speaker’s actions, or actions for which she/he bears responsibility in political discourse: proximisation (cf. Cap 2006), common ground, and assertion-based patterns. It starts with a brief description of the phenomenon of linguistic legitimisation of the speaker’s actions, or of actions for which she/he is responsible. The notion may be readily associated with one of the positive politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), however, it is far more than a politeness strategy, as it consists of a number of pragmatic and extra-pragmatic phenomena: (a) proximisation theory and the STA model for legitimisation (Cap 2005, 2006) enriched with positive, negative and neutral values, (b) assertive speech acts, and their role in assertive-directive and thesis-antithesis patterns, (c) common ground strategy. The operation of these mechanisms will be demonstrated in the analysis of a speech delivered by the Spanish Prime Minister on the acceptance of the bill allowing same-sex marriages. The application of a top-down approach to the analysis (de? Beaugrande 1991) reveals that all the aforementioned aspects comprise a net of complementary linguistic mechanisms ideally suited for the purpose of legitimisation.