Strategies of legitimisation : the case of women driving in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Since women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, two campaigns were launched in June 2011 and October 2013 calling to lift the ban. Both proponents and opponents of women driving have their own reasons to legitimize or de-legitimize women driving. This study is mainly concerned about the use of language as a legitimization tool in society. It seeks to reveal the strategies used by both proponents and opponents on mass media to legitimize their attitudes and to find out how do public react and reflect on this discourse through the little available space of YouTube comments. The data are in two types and they are all gathered from YouTube; first, videos of TV shows that are uploaded on YouTube representing the mass media content. Second, the online public comments and reflections posted on these videos as the User-Generated Content (UGC). An interdisciplinary framework based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theory, the researcher adopts a Discourse-Historical approach (DHA) for the analysis of strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation (Wodak, 2001). Moreover, employing analytical tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) when needed to gain a deep understanding of the manipulation of linguistic elements to attain legitimization by both parties on mass media (Halliday 1985). Comments posted with regard to lifting the ban on women driving were coded into three responses; (opposing, support or neutral). Comments under each response were monitored and analysed and showed the formation of various discursive themes (e.g. racist, evaluative, supportive, feminist grievance). However, the study originality stems from the fact that it develops and proposes some key strategies of legitimization by applying them in a different social context (Van Leeuwen 1996, 2007; Van Leeuwen & Wodak 1999; Reyes, 2011). It also compares and contrasts the legitimation strategies with their similar argumentation schemes (e.g. Argument from consequence, analogy, expert opinion…etc) proposed by Douglas Walton (1995). Through comments analysis, the circulation and recurrence of many stereotypical statements, used to demonstrate the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the status quo, was noted.