(De-)Legitimizing War: a linguistic analysis of Indian and Pakistani civil and military conflict discourses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Language serves a decisive role for world leaders and politicians to legitimize their decisions to use a military option and wage a war to establish their ideologies. This work analyses the discursive legitimization strategies practiced by neighbouring states, India and Pakistan, in war discourse after a terrorist attack in Pulwama to legitimize their military actions. ‘Strategies of Legitimization’, as envisaged by Reyes (2011) is employed as a framework. The sample comprises four military press conferences and four prime ministers’ speeches. The results show that Indian civil and military discourse focused on the emotional aspect of legitimization augmented by the voices of experts and altruism to convince people to support war against Pakistan and take revenge for the Pulwama Attack. Pakistani civil and military discourse used emotions, hypothetical future, rationality, expert voices, and altruism to achieve legitimization for their no-action policy to avoid war. The study shows both religious states feed their people with emotional sentiments against each other and take an altruistic approach to the global community to rationalize their actions. Pakistan, a comparatively smaller economy, shows itself to be a harbinger of peace, whereas India roused emotions for immediate military engagement to achieve its political agenda. This article shows how acts of war are linguistically constructed to convince the public that war is inevitable. Such legitimization can in turn affect the global economy and peace, as in the recent Russian invasion that has caused global inflation and price hikes.