Despite growing interest in corporate discourse practices, linguists have rarely focused specifically on the discursive legitimation of institutional or corporate actors after perceived episodes of wrongdoing. This may be due to the fact that under normal conditions, legitimation may scarcely be perceptible, only reaching a significant pitch when a major crisis threatens the existence of the agents involved. Should such an event occur, then institutions will summon up a range of justificatory discursive strategies embodying ideological elements that will resonate with socially accepted ideas, feelings or desires. One case in which legitimation could clearly be perceived was that of the oil industry after the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. In the wake of the disaster, as the oil spread and the crisis appeared to be uncontrollable, public opinion turned against the oil industry. It comes as no surprise that the messages to shareholders published in the annual reports of oil corporations during the following year all make reference to the incident and attempt to legitimate both the individual companies and the sector as a whole, in the eyes of the public in general and the shareholders for whom the reports are intended. This article examines the discourses of legitimation used in these texts, focusing specifically on the roles assumed by the writer as scientist and environmentalist, as well as financial expert, and on the storytelling techniques used to present the events as a survivor narrative. It discusses ways in which these writers endeavour to engage readers' solidarity, while also appealing to their interests as stakeholders. These discourses operate on an ideological level to underpin the workings of large corporations within the complex panorama of contemporary capitalism.

This article briefly reviews the rise of Critical Discourse Analysis and teases out a detailed analysis of the various critiques that have been levelled at CDA and its practitioners over the last twenty years, both by scholars working within the “critical” paradigm and by other critics. A range of criticisms are discussed which target the underlying premises, the analytical methodology and the disputed areas of reader response and the integration of contextual factors. Controversial issues such as the predominantly negative focus of much CDA scholarship, and the status of CDA as an emergent “intellectual orthodoxy”, are also reviewed. The conclusions offer a summary of the principal criticisms that emerge from this overview, and suggest some ways in which these problems could be attenuated.

Recent political trends in many countries have sparked renewed interest in populism. Despite general agreement that the affective/emotive aspects of political communication are particularly important in this, there is little recent analysis of how populists operationalise emotion or how they genuinely differ from mainstream parties in this sense. This article applies mixed methods to explore the 'affective-discursive practices' that characterise the discourses of two opposition parties in the United Kingdom: United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Labour. Comparison of the frequency of semantic subcategories related to emotion in corpora of press releases published by these parties on their websites is complemented by qualitative analysis of how specific emotional areas such as fear, anger and anxiety are invoked by the two parties. Different 'affective-discursive practices' underpin their discourses, since Labour characteristically frames reactions to social phenomena in terms of worry and concern, while UKIP legitimates fear and anger, but also projects more positive emotions.

Legal language is often said to be formulaic, but little research is available on the nature of frequently occurring sequences of words in different legal genres. This article investigates the lexical bundles found in four legal corpora: academic law, case law, legislation, and documents. Major differences are brought to light between the type of bundles that are found, and the roles they have in the text. Academic legal writing uses relatively little formulaic language. Case law uses noun phrase bundles relating to agents, documents and actions, as well as many extended prepositional phrases. Legislation and documents contain many noun phrase bundles, and verb phrase bundles with a deontic or referential function. The function of these different types of bundle as parts of a schematic frame or as slot-fillers is discussed.

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