L’identità come mezzo di (de)legittimazione: procedure linguistiche e pragmatiche nel discorso politico

This article addresses a classical topic for the theories of political discourse, i.e. its use for delegitimizing the opponents by means of evocating symbols and beliefs and creating meaning relations. We aim to understand how the capacity of the political language of influencing the convictions and the thoughts of the persons depends on what Bourdieu (2001) calls the «legitimate vision of the social world». The effectiveness of the political discourse and its ability in determining an attitude favourable or unfavourable to a certain world view originates not only from the culture and the social groups, but, first, in the life and in the identitary processes that include the persons. In other words, we may think that legitimization understood as a symbolic and cognitive universe is presupposed by the politicians as the semantic core inspiring and motivating their choices and proposals. The representation of the society and of the beliefs and values system that make the society imaginable and visible by the persons corresponds to the hidden semantic flow that configures our life in the time and in the space.