Security and Religion: The Discursive Self-legitimation of the Chechen Authorities

Abstract

This article analyses the official discourse of the Chechen authorities and posits that it reflects the government’s efforts as self-legitimation. This investigation seeks to identify the mechanisms exploited by the Chechen regime to boost self-legitimacy by examining the ‘News’ programme on the Chechen state television channel ‘Grozny’, which, in the authoritarian setting of Chechnya, became the government’s mouthpiece and a propagator of official discourse. To provide for the context and to boost findings, the study is complemented by a discursive analysis of one more historical-political television programme and a political advertisement that was broadcast by the same channel during the period in which the fieldwork took place. The collected data is processed using Critical Discourse Analysis.