Language of Legitimization in Political Discourse on Kashmir Issue

This study concerns the discursive strategies used in political discourse to legitimize conflicting positions on the Kashmir issue, a major issue between Pakistan and India. More specifically, the study has attempted to address the question of legitimization strategies and their linguistic realizations feature in the Pakistani and the Indian Prime Minister’s speeches after the abrogation of Article 370 about the Kashmir issue. The data consists of the speeches the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered after the abrogation of Article 370 on Kashmir. The whole research has been framed under the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis, and the speeches have been analyzed in terms of Reyes’ (2011) strategies of legitimization, and Halliday’s (2014) Transitivity Model. The data analysis reveals that both prime ministers use the strategies of emotion, hypothetical future, rationality, the voice of expertise, and altruism to justify their respective positions and to attack their opponents. Yet, they differ in the linguistic realizations of these strategies mainly due to their different mental models of the communicative event rooted in their differing ideological perspectives. The findings establish the significance of language as an analytical tool that can help understand the nature of discursive practices underlying certain ideologies.