This book investigates linguistic strategies of threat construction and fear generation in contemporary public communication, including state political discourse as well as non-governmental, media and institutional discourses. It describes the ways in which the construction of closeness and remoteness can be manipulated in the public sphere and bound up with fear, security and conflict. Featuring a series of case studies in different domains, from presidential speeches to environmental discourse, it demonstrates how political and organizational leaders enforce the imminence of an outside threat to claim legitimization of preventive policies. It reveals that the best legitimization effects are obtained by discursively constructed fear appeals, which ensure quick social mobilization. The scope of the book is of immediate concern in the modern globalized era where borders and distance dissolve and are re-imagined. It will appeal to students and researchers in linguistics, discourse analysis, media communication as well as social and political sciences.

Examines the extent to which proximization rhetoric is used to legitimize various public policies Argues for the value of the Proximization Theory model in Critical Discourse Studies Shows that the fear appeal is a legitimization strategy in a wide range of discourse

Autorentext

Piotr Cap is Professor of Linguistics at the University of ód, Poland. His interests are in pragmatics, critical discourse studies, political linguistics and genre theory. His publications include Perspectives in Politics and Discourse (2010), Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing (2013), Analyzing Genres in Political Communication (2013) and Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies (2014). He is Managing Editor of International Review of Pragmatics.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Cognitive, social and psychological issues of public discourse and threat communication.- Chapter 2: Proximization: A threat-based model of policy legitimization.- Chapter 3: Health discourse: The war on cancer and beyond.- Chapter 4: Environmental discourse: Climate change.- Chapter 5: Technological discourse: Threats in the cyber-space.- Chapter 6: Immigration and anti-migration discourses: The early rhetoric of Brexit.- Chapter 7: Conclusion.