The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) is pleased to announce the publication of a new open access volume in the IAS/Springer “Asia in Transition” Series entitled Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance edited by Kumaran Rajandran and Charity Lee.
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.
To access the chapters in this volume, please visit the Springer/IAS “Asia in Transition” Series website.
Dr. Kumaran Rajandran is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. He teaches BA and MA courses and supervises MA and PhD research in Linguistics. His research involves the multimodal study of various discourses, exploring the articulation of identity and ideology in contemporary societies.
Dr. Charity Lee is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics at Universiti Malaya. Her areas of research include narrative analysis and discourse analysis, particularly involving social practices surrounding migrant and vulnerable groups, as well as narrative methodology. Her research also includes communication practices in media, politics and health care. She teaches German Linguistics and translation at the undergraduate level and a range of discourse analysis approaches at the postgraduate level.
Kumaran Rajandran and Charity Lee (eds.). 2023. Discursive Approaches to Politics in Malaysia: Legitimising Governance. IAS/Springer Asia in Transition Series. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5334-7
Information about the other titles in the IAS/Springer – Asia in Transition series can be found here.
