The construction of nationhood and other identities in the political speeches of Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Abstract

The study of political discourse is central to contemporary critical discourse analysis, and usually involves the detailed analysis of a relatively small body of data. In this paper we make use of the methodology of corpus linguistics to organise and search the several millions of words contained in the published speeches and other works of Dr Mahathir. The usual aim of critical analysis is to reveal the often unpleasant ideologies hidden and implicit in political discourse. Since the ideologies are hidden, it is difficult to find any independent confirmation of the analysis. In this case, Dr Mahathir is himself a highly original and highly critical thinker, and his own position is carefully thought through and made fully explicit. In fact left-wing critical linguists from the West are likely to find their own hidden ideologies brought into the open and challenged. Dr Mahathir's speeches give critical linguists a rare opportunity to check the validity of their own methodology by comparing their analyses with the explicit accounts given in the speeches and other writings. The matters concerned are of the greatest possible importance in the conduct of relations between East and West in the twenty first century. Perhaps critical discourse analysis should not be seen as an obscure branch of linguistics in which disempowered academics attack politicians, but as an area in which a scientific approach to language can contribute to the real world at a high level by deconstructing obstacles to international communication.