Abstract
This study aimed at exploring legitimation strategies used by two members of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (or Partai Solidaritas Indonesia, abbreviated as PSI) in justifying their party leader’s controversial statement on the abandonment of Sharia Law. To do so, it employed critical discourse analysis (CDA) with Leeuwen’s legitimation strategies (2007, 2008) as its analytical tool. The data were obtained from two separate interviews with PSI members aired on two different Indonesian TV channels. The interviews were transcribed and translated. From this process, a 1.170-word corpus, from which the data were derived, was generated. The findings showed that moral evaluation is the most dominant legitimation strategy, followed by rationalization and authorization. In moral evaluation, abstraction occurs most often, followed by evaluation and analogy. In rationalization, theoretical rationalization is used more often than instrumental rationalization. Finally, in authorization, PSI utilized impersonal authority to reject the Sharia Law by referring to academic studies and legal documents which assess the law as being negative. Meanwhile, expert authority was used to build legitimation by reference to experts who support the negative effects of the law. This study implies the power of language to legitimize a controversial activity by using different linguistics strategies.
Highlights
Language serves many purposes, one of which is to legitimate action or statement
This study found 30 abstractions, 16 evaluations, and two analogies so that there are 48 moral evaluations or 68.5% of all legitimation strategies utilized by the PSI members to legitimize their objection toward Sharia Law
This study investigates the legitimation discourse used by PSI to reject Sharia Law and its micro-linguistics construction from an SFG perspective
Summary
One of which is to legitimate action or statement. Our daily uses of language are full of legitimation. When we propose an idea to a discussion forum, we often provide justifications on why such an idea needs to be implemented. We may find that parents need to give a logical argument when they tell their children to do something. Providing reasons and arguments to justify why something needs to be implemented to someone is called legitimation. This definition is in line with Said (2017) who mentions that “legitimation refers to the process by which speakers justify, endorse or sanction an action or a behavior to an audience”
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