Introduction (Kumaran Rajandran) -- Chapter 1. Voices of economic competence: Legitimizing the government in budget speeches (Kumaran Rajandran) -- Chapter 2. Legitimizing the government through vocational roles: A conceptual metaphor analysis of budget speeches (Farrah Diebaa Rashid Ali) -- Chapter 3. ‘My appeal to the Malaysian people’: Legitimizing the appointment as the 8th Prime Minister (Shanti Sandaran) -- Chapter 4. Ethnic inclusions and exclusions in the discourses of the Dignity Conference (Mary Varghese) -- Chapter 5. Selling race and religion in Malay language newspapers during the 2013 and 2018 general election campaigns (Siti Nurnadilla Mohamad Jamil) -- Chapter 6. Contesting views in the representation of ICERD in English language newspapers (Pei Soo Ang) -- Chapter 7. Framing the Tanjung Piai by-election in multilingual Malaysian newspapers (Prasana Rosaline Fernandez) -- Chapter 8. Conceptualizing money laundering in the 1MDB scandal: Ananalysis of metaphors in Sarawak Report (Rachel Lim) -- Chapter 9. KitaJagaKita: (De)legitimizing the government during the 2020 movement control order (Charity Lee) -- Chapter 10. Seeking legitimation in political uncertainties: Reforming the media? (Kow Kwan Yee).

Open Access

This open access book examines Malaysian politics using a linguistic perspective. It explores how language serves to (de)legitimise governance, and its subsequent policies and activities in Malaysia. Grounded in discourse studies, this edited volume presents research on the discourses produced by and on Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional from 2008 to 2020, studying how political actors (de)legitimise their governance through discursive means. The thirteen original chapters select spoken, print and digital texts in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and deploy varied theoretical and methodological approaches. Their linguistic analysis unearths the language features and strategies that facilitate (de)legitimation. It shows how political actors shape the discursive representation and evaluation of multiple concerns in Malaysia. Consequently, Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance improves our understanding of contemporary Malaysian political discourse. It is of interest to graduates and researchers in the field of discourse studies, seeking to understand the discursive contours of politics in this developing Asian country.