@article{ref1,
title="War legitimation discourse: Representing 'Us' and 'Them' in four US presidential addresses",
journal="Discourse and society",
year="2011",
author="Oddo, John",
volume="22",
number="3",
pages="287-314",
abstract="This article presents an intertextual analysis of legitimation in four 'call-to-arms' speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush. Drawing on Thibault's (1991) account of critical intertextual analysis, I identify key legitimation strategies and thematic formations that underlie the rhetoric of both speakers. In addition, I (re)situate the speeches in their wider social and historical context to demonstrate how both presidents manipulated the public. In the analysis, I first examine how both speakers use polarizing lexical resources to constitute 'Us' and 'Them' as superordinate thematic categories that covertly legitimate war. Next, I analyze how representations of the past and future also function to legitimate violence across the four speeches. Finally, I examine how both presidents demarcate group membership to discredit opponents of war at home, and legitimate violence against non-aggressors abroad. I conclude that, in spite of popular mythology, Bush is not an aberrant American president; he is one of many to have misled the public into war.<p />",
language="",
issn="0957-9265",
doi="10.1177/0957926510395442",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926510395442"
}