Legitimation in Corporate Discourse: The Case of Enbridge and the Northern Gateway Pipeline

Abstract

Despite interest in the genres of corporate discourse, and recognition of the role of corporations in shaping social knowledge and 'reality', critical discourse analysts have infrequently focused on investigating how corporate actors employ discursive strategies to represent and legitimate their activities.Widely studied in other disciplines such as political science, philosophy and law, legitimation is a necessary field of inquiry for critical discourse studies as it is through this discursive practice that corporations employ ideological arguments to influence and manipulate public knowledge and opinion.This thesis is a qualitative critical discourse and multimodal analysis of the oil corporation Enbridge's "Gateway Facts" website -an online discourse created to offer information to the public regarding their new Northern Gateway Pipeline project proposed in westernCanada.An extremely controversial project among the Canadian public largely due to its potentially devastating environmental impacts, Enbridge, like other oil corporations worldwide, has been forced to devote large amounts of time and energy to justify and promote this pipeline.This results of this study argue that a close analysis of the website's discursive strategies reveals the appropriation of four discursive themes to rationalize, justify and legitimate the NGP: economic development, scientific and technical expertise, environmental stewardship, and industry leadership.These findings suggest that this type of corporate legitimation may be a reflection of the broader ideology of late capitalism's struggle to justify controversial practices at a time when environmental protection is a priority and public attitudes and understandings of corporate responsibility are shifting.This thesis underscores the importance of critical studies of corporate discourse, especially that offered online, as it has the potential to highlight the ideological underpinnings of corporations and their actions.

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