War rhetoric of a little ally: Political implicatures and Aznar’s legitimatization of the war in Iraq

van Dijk, Teun A.

doi:10.1075/jlp.4.1.04dij

Article published In: The Soft Power of War: Legitimacy and community in Iraq war discourses
Edited by Lilie Chouliaraki
[Journal of Language and Politics 4:1] 2005
► pp. 65–91

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download PDF

War rhetoric of a little ally

Political implicatures and Aznar’s legitimatization of the war in Iraq

Teun A. van Dijk | Universitat Pompeu FabraBarcelona

Published online: 8 June 2005

https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.4.1.04dij

In this paper we examine some of the properties of the speeches by former Prime Minister José María Aznar held in Spanish parliament in 2003 legitimating his support of the USA and the threatening war against Iraq. The theoretical framework for the analysis is a multidisciplinary CDA approach relating discursive, cognitive and sociopolitical aspects of parliamentary debates. It is argued that speeches in parliament should not only be defined in terms of their textual properties, but also in terms of a contextual analysis. Besides an analysis of the usual properties of ideological and political discourse, such as positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation and other rhetoric devices, special attention is paid to political implicatures defined as inferences based on general and particular political knowledge as well as on the context models of Aznar’s speeches.

Keywords: political discourse, political cognition, political rhetoric, political implicatures, legitimation, Critical Discourse Analysis, Iraq, war

References (35)

References

Atlas, J. D. 2000. Logic, Meaning, and Conversation: Semantical Underdeterminacy, Implicature, and the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bayley, P. 2004. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Borch, F. L. and Wilson, P. S. 2003. International Law and the War on Terror. Newport, R.I.: Naval War College.

Chilton, P. A., 2004. Political Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.

Chomsky, N. 2003. Hegemony or Survival. America’s Quest for Global Dominance. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Christopher, P. 2003. The Ethics of War and Peace. An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Daalder, I. H and Lindsay, J. M 2003. America Unbound. The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.

Dinstein, Y. 2001. War, Aggression, and Self-Defense. Cambridge [England] New York: Cambridge University Press.

Falk, R. A 2003. The Great Terror War. New York: Olive Branch Press.

Gareau, F. H 2004. State Terrorism and the United States. From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press.

Gazdar, G. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition and Logical Form. New York: Academic Press.

Geis, M. L 1987. The Language of Politics. New York: Springer.

Goodin, R. E and Klingemann, H. D (eds). 1996. A New Handbook of Political Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Grice, H. P 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Iyengar, S. andMcGuire, W. J 1993. Explorations in Political Psychology. Durham: Duke University Press.

Lau, R. R and Sears, D. O (eds). 1986. Political Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Levinson, S. C 2000. Presumptive Meanings. The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Martín Rojo, L. 1995. Division and rejection: From the personification of the Gulf conflict to the demonisation of Saddam Hussein. Discourse & Society6(1), 49–79.

Martín Rojo, L. and Van Dijk, T. A 1997. “There was a problem, and it was solved!” Legitimating the expulsion of ‘illegal’ immigrants in Spanish parliamentary discourse. Discourse & Society8(4), 523–567.

Newhouse, J. 2003. Imperial America. The Bush Assault on the World Order. New York: Knopf.

Nye, J. S 2000. Understanding International Conflicts. An Introduction to Theory and History. New York: Longman.

Rodin, D. 2002. War and Self-Defense. Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.

Tetlock, P. E 1984. Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 461, 365–375.

Van Dijk, T. A 1993. Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse & Society 4(2), 249–83.

1998a. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London, England UK: Sage Publications.

1998b. What is political discourse analysis?In: Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcaen (eds). Political Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 11-52.

2000. Parliamentary debates. In: R. Wodak and T. A van Dijk (eds). Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt, Austria: Drava Verlag, 45-78.

2001. Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In: Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 95-120.

2002. Political discourse and political cognition. In: Paul A. Chilton and Christina Schäffner (eds). Politics as Text and Talk. Analytical approaches to political discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 204-236.

2003. Knowledge in parliamentary debates. Journal of Language and Politics 2(1), 93-129.

2004. Text and context of parliamentary debates. In: P. Bayleyed.. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 339–372.

Wilson, J. 1990. Politically Speaking. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wodak, R. ed. 1989. Language, Power, and Ideology. Studies in Political Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Wodak, R. and Menz, F. (eds.) 1990. Sprache in der Politik — Politik in der Sprache. Analysen zum öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch. (Language in Politics — Politics in Language. Analyses of Public Language Use). Klagenfurt: Drava.

Wodak, R. and Van Dijk, T. A (eds.) Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt, Austria: Drava Verlag.

Cited by (91)

Cited by 91 other publications

Order by:

Arlow, Jonathan

2025. Measuring libertarian ideology with party manifesto data. Contemporary Politics 31:5 ► pp. 707 ff.

Consuegra-Fernández, Marta, Emilia Castaño & Joan-Gabriel Burguera-Serra

2025. “With all due respect, you are a bunch of sociopaths”: A critical discourse analysis of the metaphorical use of mental health disorders in the Spanish Parliament. Discourse & Society

ElMansy, Sarah & Hoda Zaiton

2025. Cracking the code: untangling the chessboard of (de)legitimization in the International Court of Justice 2024 using computational linguistics approaches. Language and Semiotic Studies

Mohammed, Mohammed Hayder & Mohammed Abbas Mahdi

2025. Analysis of Pragmatic Terms in Western Political Discourse Intended to Convey a Message to Iraq: US Ambassador's Speech as a Case Study. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics 4:1 ► pp. 108 ff.

Zhang, Junchen

2025. The historical evolution of Chinese political discourse and socio-ideological change: a discourse-historical analysis. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12:1

Kim, Ji Young

2024. Exploring Frames and Negativity Strategies in the News During an Election Campaign. In Exploring Korean Politeness Across Online and Offline Interactions [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 205 ff.

Lin, Yuting

2024. Correcting the scientific record. Pragmatics and Society 15:4 ► pp. 532 ff.

Mennecke, Olga

2024. “Kyiv regime,” “junta,” “neo-Nazis,” “ethnic Jew”: discursive derogation of Ukrainian authorities and enemy-other constructions in Vladimir Putin’s speeches. Canadian Slavonic Papers 66:3-4 ► pp. 323 ff.

Mohammadi, Ariana N

2024. Political framing of Covid-19. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 189 ff.

Osisanwo, Ayo

2024. Self-legitimation in selected speeches of Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram terrorists leader. Critical Discourse Studies ► pp. 1 ff.

Tymbay, Alexey

2024. Reading ‘between the lines’: How implicit language helps liberal media survive in authoritarian regimes. The Kommersant Telegram posts case study. Discourse & Communication 18:4 ► pp. 557 ff.

Özşahin, M. Cüneyt & Cenap Çakmak

2024. Between defeating “the warlord” and defending “the blue homeland”: a discourse of legitimacy and security in Turkey’s Libya policy. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 37:1 ► pp. 79 ff.

Aru, Silvia

2023. ‘Battleship at the port of Europe’: Italy's closed-port policy and its legitimizing narratives. Political Geography 104 ► pp. 102902 ff.

Brusenbauch Meislová, Monika

2023. In Quest for Discursive Legitimation of Ongoing Policy Processes: Constructing Brexit as a Success Story. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 61:3 ► pp. 815 ff.

Kaltseis, Magdalena

2023. War Discourse on TV: A Glimpse into Russian Political Talk Shows (2014 and 2022). Zeitschrift für Slawistik 68:3 ► pp. 375 ff.

Lastres-López, Cristina

2023. Morphosyntactic and pragmatic variation in conditional constructions in English and Spanish parliamentary discourse. In Exploring Language and Society with Big Data [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 111], ► pp. 308 ff.

Telford, Andrew

2023. Where to draw the line? Climate change-conflict-migration-terrorism causal relations and a contested politics of implication. Environmental Science & Policy 141 ► pp. 138 ff.

Wigienka, Szymon

2023. Challenging ‘Leftist Big Tech’ through Right-wing Alternative Social Media: Parler and Albicla in Polish Conservative Media Discourse. Zarządzanie Mediami 11:1 ► pp. 87 ff.

Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Ana Belén

2022. Manipulation as an ideological tool in the political genre of Parliamentary discourses. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 207 ff.

Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Ana Belén

2023. Transitivity and evaluation in American and Spanish parliamentary discourse: the 2015 State of the Union Address in the US vs. the 2015 State of the Nation Address in Spain. Critical Discourse Studies 20:2 ► pp. 128 ff.

Efeoğlu Özcan, Esranur

2022. Pull the weeds out or perish: Using pandemic metaphors to strengthen in-group solidarity in Turkish political discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 37:2 ► pp. 171 ff.

Gelabert-Desnoyer, Jaime J.

2022. Not so impersonal. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 407 ff.

Li, Ke & Xiaonan Gong

2022. Proximization: a critical cognitive analysis of health security discourse. Text & Talk 42:5 ► pp. 713 ff.

Lin, Yuting & Meilin Chen

2022. “The more important findings are sustained”: A diachronic perspective on the genre of the retraction notice. English for Specific Purposes 67 ► pp. 18 ff.

Liu, Ming

2022. Stancetaking in Hong Kong political discourse. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 13:1 ► pp. 79 ff.

Navarro, Francisco de Borja & Aiden Yeh

2022. The Dangerous Discourse of “Us” vs. “Them:” Spain's VOX Discursive Practices. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 16:2 ► pp. 211 ff.

Panpothong, Natthaporn & Siriporn Phakdeephasook

2022. “I Am Well-Loved by the Voters”: Self-Praise in Thai Political Discourse and Two Emic Concepts of Thai (Im)politeness. In Self-Praise Across Cultures and Contexts [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 351 ff.

TEKİN, Beyza Çağatay

2022. THE DISCURSIVE LEGITIMATION OF THE EU-TURKEY REFUGEE DEAL IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE. Marmara Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Dergisi 44:1 ► pp. 239 ff.

Türkeş-Kılıç, Selin & Gizem Cakmak

2022. Turkey and Greece as frenemies: discourse-historical approach to foreign policy repertoires of the leaders. Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos :33 ► pp. 225 ff.

Abuelwafa, Marwa Adel

2021. Legitimation and Manipulation in Political Speeches: A Corpus-based Study. Procedia Computer Science 189 ► pp. 11 ff.

Akanda, Muhammad Anisur Rahman

2021. Textual meaning: Media messages of Bangladesh–China relation and its Themes. Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies 10:1 ► pp. 27 ff.

Almaged, Sadiq

2021. THE DISCURSIVE FORMULATION OF BREXIT: DECISION, OPPORTUNITY AND NEEDFUL AGREEMENT. Discourse and Interaction 14:1 ► pp. 5 ff.

El Shazly, Reham Farouk

2021. The synergy of topoi and socio-cognition in ideology construction and identity reformation: war on terror discourse. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 13:1 ► pp. 62 ff.

Karpenko-Seccombe, Tatyana

2021. Separatism: a cross-linguistic corpus-assisted study of word-meaning development in a time of conflict. Corpora 16:3 ► pp. 379 ff.

Mestre-Mestre, Eva M.

2021. Emotion and Sentiment Polarity in Parliamentary Debate: A Pragmatic Comparative Study. Corpus Pragmatics 5:3 ► pp. 359 ff.

Mestre-Mestre, Eva M.

2023. Emotion in Politics in Times of War: A Corpus Pragmatics Study. Corpus Pragmatics 7:4 ► pp. 323 ff.

Norberg, Anna-Maija

2021. "Man kan inte bara gympa sig igenom ämnet". Educare :3 ► pp. 181 ff.

Tang, Liping

2021. The putative addressee in the persuasion of diplomatic discourse: China’s communication efforts through South African English-language newspapers. Discourse & Communication 15:4 ► pp. 458 ff.

Ward, Sean & John Budarick

2021. Adapting to the postmodern medical paradigm: how The Daily Telegraph used emotion and anecdote to legitimise vaccination. Media International Australia 181:1 ► pp. 103 ff.

Galnoor, Netta

2020. From Jewish Sentiments to Rational Exhortations. Israel Studies Review 35:2 ► pp. 130 ff.

Li, Tao & Yifan Zhu

2020. How does China appraise self and others? A corpus-based analysis of Chinese political discourse. Discourse & Society 31:2 ► pp. 153 ff.

Baldi, Benedetta, Ludovico Franco & Leonardo M. Savoia

2019. Alternative truths and delegitimization pragmatic strategies around the 2018 Italian elections. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 7:2 ► pp. 293 ff.

Björkvall, Anders & Catharina Nyström Höög

2019. Legitimation of value practices, value texts, and core values at public authorities. Discourse & Communication 13:4 ► pp. 398 ff.

Boukala, Salomi

2019. Greek Media Discourse About the ‘Islamist Threat’: From ‘Islamist Terrorism’ to ‘ISIS Terror’. In European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press, ► pp. 127 ff.

Del Saz-Rubio, Mª Milagros

2019. The pragmatic-semiotic construction of male identities in contemporary advertising of male grooming products. Discourse & Communication 13:2 ► pp. 192 ff.

del Saz-Rubio, Mª Milagros

2024. Delineating the discursive (de) legitimation strategies outlined by Spanish politicians in their no-confidence motion speeches. Discourse & Communication

Golubeva, Tatyana

2019. Hyperbole as a Persuasion Tool in Political Discourse (The Case of British Politicians’ Speech). Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serija 2. Jazykoznanije :3 ► pp. 195 ff.

Atkinson, David & Cinta Ramblado

2018. Democratic credentials and the ‘other(s)’ in the discourse of the SpanishPartido Popular,1977–2015. Journal of Language and Politics 17:1 ► pp. 5 ff.

Aydın-Düzgit, Senem

2018. Foreign policy and identity change: Analysing perceptions of Europe among the Turkish public. Politics 38:1 ► pp. 19 ff.

Douifi, Mohamed

2018. Introduction. In Language and the Complex of Ideology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Santibáñez Yáñez, Cristián

2018. Engaño generalizado, pragmática y argumentación. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 73 ► pp. 279 ff.

Mirhosseini, Seyyed-Abdolhamid

2017. Discursive double-legitimation of (avoiding) another war in Obama’s 2013 address on Syria. Journal of Language and Politics 16:5 ► pp. 706 ff.

Pinero-Pinero, Gracia

2017. A matrix of cognitive domains at the service of the metaphoric delegitimisation of politicians. Discourse, Context & Media 18 ► pp. 20 ff.

Santibáñez, Cristián

2017. Strategically wrong: On the relationship between generalized deception and persuasive behaviour. Journal of Pragmatics 114 ► pp. 16 ff.

Díez Prados, Mercedes

2016. The use of metaphor and evaluation as discourse strategies in pre-electoral debates. In Exploring Discourse Strategies in Social and Cognitive Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 262], ► pp. 215 ff.

Fuentes-Rodríguez, Catalina

2016. Intensification, identity and gender in the Andalusian Parliament. In A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 68], ► pp. 35 ff.

Fuentes-Rodríguez, Catalina

2023. Adversarial Attacks in Spanish Politics: Direct and Indirect Forms. In Political Debasement, ► pp. 31 ff.

Klymenko, Lina

2016. Nation-building and presidential rhetoric in Belarus. Journal of Language and Politics 15:6 ► pp. 727 ff.

Álvarez-Benito, Gloria & Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez

2016. Introduction. In A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 68], ► pp. 1 ff.

Arroyo, José Luis Blas

2015. Pragmatics of Political Discourse. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff.

Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Ana B.

2015. Manipulation in Spanish and American pre-election political debates: The Rajoy–Rubalcaba vs. Obama–McCain debates. Intercultural Pragmatics 12:4

Pinero-Pinero, Gracia & John Moore

2015. Metaphorical Conceptualization of Migration Control Laws. Journal of Language and Politics 14:4 ► pp. 577 ff.

Yılmaz, Ferruh

2015. Analyzing Variations and Stability in Discourse. Journal of Language and Politics 14:6 ► pp. 830 ff.

Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Ana B & Mercedes Díez-Prados

2014. Positive self-evaluation versus negative other-evaluation in the political genre of pre-election debates. Discourse & Society 25:2 ► pp. 159 ff.

Sandby-Thomas, Peter

2014. Chapter 2. ‘Stability overwhelms everything’. In Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 54], ► pp. 47 ff.

Guillem, Susana Martínez

2013. Constructing contexts, (re)defining immigrants: Mental models and social representations in immigration policy defense. Discourse & Society 24:2 ► pp. 208 ff.

Martínez Guillem, Susana

2009. Argumentation, metadiscourse and social cognition: organizing knowledge in political communication. Discourse & Society 20:6 ► pp. 727 ff.

Martínez Guillem, Susana

2019. Performing (in) places, moralizing (through) spaces. Journal of Language and Politics 18:6 ► pp. 803 ff.

Richard A. Posthuma & Mor Mitrani

2013. (Re-)telling societal beliefs. International Journal of Conflict Management 24:3 ► pp. 245 ff.

Zurloni, Valentino & Luigi Anolli

2013. Fallacies as Argumentative Devices in Political Debates. In Multimodal Communication in Political Speech. Shaping Minds and Social Action [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7688], ► pp. 245 ff.

Bartolucci, Valentina

2012. Terrorism rhetoric under the Bush Administration. Journal of Language and Politics 11:4 ► pp. 562 ff.

Bartolucci, Valentina

2014. L'invasione dei migranti: la costruzione simbolica di un'emergenza umanitaria nel discorso politico italiano durante i rivolgimenti nel mondo arabo. SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE :45 ► pp. 60 ff.

Gibson, Stephen

2012. ‘I'm not a war monger but…’: Discourse Analysis and Social Psychological Peace Research. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 22:2 ► pp. 159 ff.

Vuković, Milica

2012. Positioning in pre-prepared and spontaneous parliamentary discourse: Choice of person in the Parliament of Montenegro. Discourse & Society 23:2 ► pp. 184 ff.

Wilson, John & Karyn Stapleton

2012. Discourse in the shadows: Discursive construction and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Discourse & Society 23:1 ► pp. 69 ff.

Reyes, Antonio

2011. Strategies of legitimization in political discourse: From words to actions. Discourse & Society 22:6 ► pp. 781 ff.

Reyes, Antonio

2020. Spain vs. Catalonia: normalizing democracy through police intervention. Social Semiotics 30:4 ► pp. 485 ff.

Van der Linden, Nicolas, Boris Bizumic, Rune Stubager & Scott Mellon

2011. Social representational correlates of attitudes toward peace and war: A cross-cultural analysis in the United States and Denmark.. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 17:3 ► pp. 217 ff.

Gavriely-Nuri, Dalia

2010. The idiosyncratic language of Israeli ‘peace’: A Cultural Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CCDA). Discourse & Society 21:5 ► pp. 565 ff.

Gavriely-Nuri, Dalia

2010. If both opponents “extend hands in peace” — Why don’t they meet?. Journal of Language and Politics 9:3 ► pp. 449 ff.

Gavriely-Nuri, Dalia

2014. Collective memory as a metaphor: The case of speeches by Israeli prime ministers 2001–2009. Memory Studies 7:1 ► pp. 46 ff.

Gavriely-Nuri, Dalia

2014. ‘TALKING PEACE – GOING TO WAR’. Critical Discourse Studies 11:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Momani, Kawakib, Muhammad A. Badarneh & Fathi Migdadi

2010. Intertextual borrowings in ideologically competing discourses:The case of the Middle East. Journal of Intercultural Communication 10:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

O’Regan, Mary

2010. Political Language as a Flexible Friend: Irish Parliamentary Debate on the Iraq War. Irish Political Studies 25:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Rasiah, Parameswary

2010. A framework for the systematic analysis of evasion in parliamentary discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 42:3 ► pp. 664 ff.

Wieczorek, Anna

2010. "And I Quote": Direct and Indirect Point-of-View Switches in Clusivity-Oriented Discourse. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 6:2

Mishra, Smeeta

2008. Islam and Democracy. Journal of Communication Inquiry 32:2 ► pp. 155 ff.

Reyes-Rodríguez, Antonio

2008. POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND ITS SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIABLES. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 5:4 ► pp. 225 ff.

Reyes-Rodríguez, Antonio

2008. Discursive strategies in Chavez's political discourse: voicing, distancing, and shifting. Critical Discourse Studies 5:2 ► pp. 133 ff.

Lorda, Clara Ubaldina & Elisabeth Miche

2006. Two institutional interviews: José María Aznar and Jacques Chirac on the Iraq conflict. Discourse & Society 17:4 ► pp. 447 ff.

[no author supplied]

2020. The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence [Argumentation in Context, 18],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.