Pragmalinguistic parameters of legitimization in the political discourse (the case of D. Cameron’s speech)

The paper provides a critical discourse analysis of the linguistic, rhetoric and pragmatic means participating in the implementation of legitimization (i.e. granting legitimacy to political actions and decisions) - a key strategic function of the political discourse. The corpus for investigation is represented by the speech of British Prime Minister David Cameron of March 6, 2014 in which he substantiates the necessity and expediency of the European Union’s decision to impose political and economic sanctions on Russia. The evaluative lexis, syntactic structures, deictic expressions, argumentation and different types of implied meaning used by the British politician actualize the spatial, temporal and axiological dimensions of proximization - a principal cognitive mechanism of legitimization. In the speech, legitimization is also implemented through the extensive use of assertive speech acts creating the image of a competent politician and the construction of the “common ground” discourse actualizing the mutuality of the speaker’s and addressee’s aims and interests. It is argued that while seeking to form the reader’s attitude to the actions of Russia and the EU prompted by the sudden aggravation of the Ukrainian crisis, the speech produces and reproduces particular stereotypes which position Russia as a source of danger and threat to “free and democratic” Europe, thus reanimating the ideology of conflict between Russia and the West.