Abdelwahab, Y., Attia, M., Saad, M. (2022). Discursive Strategies of Legitimation and Ideological Operation in Swastika Night. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 77(1), 179-212. doi: 10.21608/opde.2022.241793
Youmna Samy Fahmy Abdelwahab; Mona Fouad Attia; Mona Eid Saad. "Discursive Strategies of Legitimation and Ideological Operation in Swastika Night". CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 77, 1, 2022, 179-212. doi: 10.21608/opde.2022.241793
Abdelwahab, Y., Attia, M., Saad, M. (2022). 'Discursive Strategies of Legitimation and Ideological Operation in Swastika Night', CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 77(1), pp. 179-212. doi: 10.21608/opde.2022.241793
Abdelwahab, Y., Attia, M., Saad, M. Discursive Strategies of Legitimation and Ideological Operation in Swastika Night. CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education, 2022; 77(1): 179-212. doi: 10.21608/opde.2022.241793
Discursive Strategies of Legitimation and Ideological Operation in Swastika Night
1Professor, English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University
2Lecturer, English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University
Abstract
This research draws on critical discourse analysis to explore the relation between power, knowledge and discourse through investigating the strategies of legitimation and ideological operation in Katharine Burdekin’s dystopian world of Swastika Night (1937). Power is investigated in this research not in conjunction with repression, coercion and conflict, but as a form of productive power which is responsible for constructing and shaping the social world through producing subjects, discourses and bodies of knowledge. The aim of the study is to show how modern philosophical power, mainly the Althusserian power, operates through producing knowledge and discourse. John Thompson’s (1990) modes of operation of ideology, Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) model of legitimation and Louis Althusser’s (1971) power of Ideological State Apparatuses are incorporated into this study to unveil the role of discourse in constructing and legitimizing ideological representations of reality and turning people into ideological subjects. The study is meant to show that the linguistic representation of reality plays a significant role in the ideological conditioning of individuals through shaping people’s knowledge of the world in the interest of some ideologies and ingraining a new version of reality which leads to the hegemony of some groups over the others. Linguistic representations present social constructs as natural products and disguise power in the language of morality, legitimacy, altruism and rationality.