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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 31:4 (2021) ► pp.483–508

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Understandable public anger

Legitimation in banking after the 2008 crisis

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Navarra
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 27 July 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20065.bre
Abstract
In the ten years from 2008 onwards the banking sector was constantly in the spotlight. Blame for the financial crisis and concern regarding controversial government bailouts were followed by public outrage about inflated bonuses, money laundering and false reporting. Over this period, banks deployed a range of legitimation strategies to salvage their reputation. This paper proposes a modified typology of legitimation strategies based on previous research (van Leeuwen, Theo, and Ruth Wodak. 1999. “Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Discourse-Historical Perspective.” Discourse Studies 11: 83–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Vaara, Eero, Janne Tienari, and Juha Laurila. 2006. “Pulp and Paper Fiction: On the Discursive Legitimation of Global Industrial Restructuring.” Organization Studies 271: 789–810. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and examines how these are used by in the “letter to shareholders” published by the chairs of the five main UK-based banks over the ten years following the crisis. The strategies are analysed in terms of their object, target and interdiscursive features, and the particular persuasive roles of narrative and emotion are underlined.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework: Legitimation strategies
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Normalisation
    • 4.2Authorisation
    • 4.3Rationalisation
    • 4.4Moralisation
      • 4.4.1Claims to virtue
      • 4.4.2Claiming solidarity and projecting empathy
    • 4.5Mythopoesis
      • 4.5.1Metaphor
      • 4.5.2Re-narrativisations
      • 4.5.3Future promise
    • 4.6Overview of strategies
  • 5.Discussion
  • References
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2024. Lessons learned?. In Manufacturing Dissent [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 339], ► pp. 284 ff. DOI logo
Fernández-Vallejo, Ana María
2023. Comunicar la sostenibilidad en las cadenas hoteleras españolas: el uso de las páginas web como herramienta de legitimación. Doxa Comunicación. Revista Interdisciplinar de Estudios de Comunicación y Ciencias Sociales ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo

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