The pragmatics of alternative futures in political discourses: Legitimising the politics of preemption in Trump’s discourse on Iran

Ali Basarati, Hadaegh Rezaei and Mohammad Amouzadeh
Abstract

We shall concentrate on how the construction and modality system of alternative futures in political discourses are influenced by the construal of past-to-present threats and preemptive politics. Using Dunmire’s (2005)Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar proposed framework and further explorations by Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar on the subject, we approach twenty of Trump’s speeches on Iran, from 2017–2020. Our analyses indicated that the construction of alternative futures is modified by the evaluations of Iran’s past-to-present status and the politics of preemption. This relationship modifies the speaker’s epistemic judgment on the certainty of the privileged future, the cause-effect relation, and the sceptic views on the successful implementation of preemptive measures, resulting in the articulation of the privileged future through probabilistic and dynamic modalities. Moreover, the privileged future is conceptualised as necessary through deontic modality. By contrast, the realisation of the oppositional future is articulated through unmediated modality pinpointing the status that will materialise in light of inaction and negligence.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

We build a world of justice or we will live in a world of coercion. George, W. Bush, May 23, 2002

If we do not confront this deadly terror, we know what the future will bring – more suffering and despair… Donald, J. Trump, May 21, 2017

1.Introduction

This paper is a sequel to Patricia Dunmire’s proposed analytical framework on alternative futures in political discourses (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) and further explorations on the subject in Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar. Constructing alternative futures is considered as one of the cardinal legitimisation devices in political discourses (cf. Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; see also Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). The representation of the future and its particular rhetorical functions constitute the key ideological components of political discourses in implicating discursive practice and physical action (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 484). “As a site of possible and potential”, the future “represents a contested rhetorical domain through which partisans attempt to wield ideological and political power” (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 482–3). Political speakers, as Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar notes, make use of rhetorical, lexico-grammatical, and pragmatic toolkit to define and legitimise certain future-oriented policies in terms of privileged and oppositional futures. The construal of futures in terms of positive and oppositional visions (i.e., alternative futures) figures in the fundamental objective of political communication aimed at constituting shared views amongst social subjects (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

The construal of alternative futures is subsumed in threat construction and fear generation through which the oppositional future is strategically conceptualised as an imminent and momentous threat to the privileged future of the US camp (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In this, Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar notes that the present is construed as a temporal space to undertake preventive/preemptive actions.

In line with Dunmire’s (2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) studies and investigations on alternative futures, Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar presents the analytical framework of Alternative Futures in Political Discourses to study the construals of alternative futures in political discourses. Notwithstanding the fact that Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar provides appropriate theoretical grounds and an analytical toolkit for the study of alternative futures, there are still three important lines of critical enquiry regarding the theoretical and analytical structure of the framework that the present study aims to take into account:

  1. It is noted in the framework that the main function of preemptive policies is to thwart the materialisation of the oppositional future. However, in spite of the fact that the framework employs logico-rhetorical relations – such as circumstance, solution-hood, anti-thesis, etc., as elaborated in Mann and Thompson (1988)Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar – to examine the relations between opposing views on the future (i.e., privileged and oppositional futures), it does not extend the application of these relations to illuminate how preemptive policies endorse the privileged future and preempt the oppositional futures.

  2. The construal of the present and accounts of the past as dangerous and rife with threats inflicting the future invokes the political speaker to justify and legitimise certain preemptive policy options. Nevertheless, the framework does not explicitly account for how and through what logico-rhetorical relations present evaluations and past reconstructions of events in a particular context contribute to justifying preemptive policies.

  3. In line with Dunmire’s (2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) findings, this framework postulates that the privileged future is construed through unmediated categorial truth whilst the oppositional future is articulated through tentative and probabilistic modality. On this basis, this framework solely accounts for the epistemic judgments of the speaker on the realisation of the privileged and oppositional futures. But it does not deal with examining the modality of the alternative futures and possible modality shifts in light of lexico-grammatical relations between the preemptive policies and alternative futures, lexico-grammatical properties of structures construing alternative futures, and the effects that alternative futures are expected to bring about.

Given what we outlined above, our arguments run as follows: in political discourses, the materialisation of the privileged future, as well as the preclusion of the oppositional future, is strongly bound to successful operationalisation of certain preemptive policies. This is mainly because, we shall argue, the future in its privileged version is the consequence of successful working of preemptive policies. So is the preclusion of the oppositional future. However, the successful operationalisation of preemptive policies is by no means a self-help thing; rather, the evaluations of the present status and historical records affect the degree of success in these policies. Therefore, variables such as the successful working of preemptive policies as well as present and past evaluations and reconstructions may trigger modality shifts in construing the alternative futures. What is more, the modality of the privileged future is sensitive to whether the speaker is the agent to materialise it or the agency is deictically projected on another entity over which the speaker has no control.

The objective of this paper is threefold: approaching Donald Trump’s 2017–2020 discourse on Iran, first, we shall explore how Iran’s present and past states are construed in Trump’s discourse, and then we shall examine their role in evoking and justifying the adoption of preemptive policies. Second, we shall study the logico-rhetorical relations between policy options, including preemptive policies, and alternative future constructions in political discourses. That is to say, we shall seek to explore what role policy measures play in relation to the alternative futures. Along with the first objective, this will include investigating the triadic relationship amongst present and past evaluations, preemptive measures, and alternative futures. Third, and finally, we shall explore the epistemic evaluations of the reality of alternative futures in light of its dependence upon policy options, deictic projection of agency, and credible historical knowledge and experience. To these ends, we shall incorporate the framework for Alternative Futures in Political Discourses with Proximisation Theory (Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In this connection, we shall employ the rhetorical and pragma-linguistic toolkit Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar proposed to examine the ways politicians envisage competing visions of the future to legitimise certain future-oriented policies. However, to examine the construals of the present and past in Trump’s discourse on Iran, we shall employ Proximisation Theory (Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

2.Review of literature

2.1The politics and ideology of future pre-configuration

Political discourses preconfigure the realities of the future in light of ideological and economic interests as well as political and strategic considerations. The pre-configuration of visions and insights on the future has unnegotiable socio-cultural implications and influences since, as Martin (2014Martin, Thomas 2014 “Governing an Unknowable Future: The Politics of Britain’s Prevent Policy.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 7 (1): 62–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 65) maintains, the plurality of possible futures – driven from the plethora of public, political, and media discourses – governs the contemporary world. Accordingly, this is the main reason explaining why political discourses and practices are understood to be largely grounded upon temporal, conceptual, and practical dimension of the future (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 10). The assumptions and insights of dominant political actors and elites on the reality of the future, as Dunmire (2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 482) argues, are projected “as universal and as grounded in common sense”. Through the rationalisation of their visions on future as such, Dunmire (2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 482) adds, political discourses constrain the alternative ways that the image of the future can be depicted. On this account, future is a site of possible and potential signposting the rhetorical contestation of political practitioners who endeavour to exert their ideological and political power over the future (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 483; 2010 2010 “Knowing and Controlling the Future: A Review of Futurology.” Prose Studies 32 (3): 240–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 245). This underscores the premise that the management of future is a political act mainly because power-holding institutions and organisations seek domination over the future so as to maintain the existing dominant world order or to transform it (Dunmire 2007 2007 “Emerging Threats and Coming Dangers”. In Discourse, War and Terrorism, ed. by Adam Hodges, and Chad Nilep, 19–43. Amesterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 19).

The ideological, strategic, and political knowledge that makes the future as seemingly knowable and governable is in part deeply rooted in the evaluations of the present states of affairs. Massini (2002Masini, Eleonora Barbieri 2002 “A Vision of Futures Studies.” Futures 34 (3–4): 249–259. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 250) maintains that the present states of affairs constrain premeditations and choices of changes and possible alternatives for the future. In line with the influence of the present states of affairs, the knowledge of the past, however mediated or direct, enables the politicians to render the unknowable and unseen future as seemingly knowable. Importantly, Masini (2002Masini, Eleonora Barbieri 2002 “A Vision of Futures Studies.” Futures 34 (3–4): 249–259. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 250) argues that the significance of the present by no means dismisses the role of the past re/constructions in constructing the knowledge to make the future knowable and operationalisable. As a matter of fact, the past underlies and molds the prospective goals and identity of institutions and individuals (Halbwachs 1992Halbwachs, Maurice 1992On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar cited in Achugar 2009Achugar, Mariana 2009 “Constructing the Past and Constructing Themselves: The Uruguayan Military’s Memory of the Dictatorship.” Critical Discourse Studies 6 (4): 283–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 289).

2.2Alternative future and the politics of preemption

Studying the alternative futures involves investigating ways through which political and policy-making discourses construct alternative social realities, forms of being, and behavioural frameworks. Alternative futures subsume competing and contesting visions and scenarios within “new epistemological spaces” to prophesise and pre-configure the future states of affairs (Inayatullah 1990Inayatullah, Sohail 1990 “Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Future: Predictive, Cultural and Critical Epistemologies.” Futures 22 (2): 115–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 115). Realised as ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; see also Cap 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), alternative visions of future, as Cap (2020, 329) notes, are “conceptual projections of alternative policy options occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of political monologue”. In their perennial political function, alternative policy options create futures in terms of opportunities for alternative ways of being and acting (Graham 2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 765; 2002 2002 “Predication and Propagation: A Method for Analyzing Evaluative Meanings in Technology Policy.” Text & Talk 22 (2): 227–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 228; Muntigl 2002Muntigl, Peter 2002 “Politicization and Depoliticization: Employment Policy.” In Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Shchaffner, 45–80. Amesterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). These alternatives, meanwhile, constrict the emergence of certain other alternative articulations of social reality (Muntigl 2002Muntigl, Peter 2002 “Politicization and Depoliticization: Employment Policy.” In Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Shchaffner, 45–80. Amesterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 49) and the social subjects’ vision and imagination about the future (Dunmire 2010 2010 “Knowing and Controlling the Future: A Review of Futurology.” Prose Studies 32 (3): 240–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 245).

Edelman (1964Edelman, Murray J. 1964The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar, 1971 1971Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence. Chicago: Markham.Google Scholar, 1988 1988Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar) notes that the future is a main site to practise certain strategic policies and programmes aimed to reinforce and guarantee the occurrence of a favourable or privileged architecture of the future. To achieve this, the involvement of particular actions/realities must be prevented in order not to possibly jeopardise the materialisation of the privileged future (cf. Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). This shows that protecting the forethought and preconfigured future is made possible through the implementation of preemption. As a matter of fact, the adoption of preemptive measures and policies is necessitated by the premise that the future is a main locus harbouring certain devastating threats and hazards. As de Goede and Randalls (2009de Goede, Marike, and Samuel Randalls 2009 “Precaution, Preemption: Arts and Technologies of the Actionable Future.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27 (5): 859–878. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 871) argue, it is the destroying or the ‘apocalyptic’ feature of threats, so to speak, that obliges politicians to call for taking up preemptive policies.

This preemptive logic regenerates the present in terms of must-be-taken actions and policies to control and govern the future which appears unknowable and uncertain (Martin 2014Martin, Thomas 2014 “Governing an Unknowable Future: The Politics of Britain’s Prevent Policy.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 7 (1): 62–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 66). The construed threats are in themselves possibilities “because of the specific conditions of the present that allow a series of potential futures to unravel” (Martin 2014Martin, Thomas 2014 “Governing an Unknowable Future: The Politics of Britain’s Prevent Policy.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 7 (1): 62–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 69). The future, thus, involves certain potential threats that are construed as inevitable to occur. The inevitability of events provides the main ground to legitimise and necessitate the preemptive policies and conflicts (Elmer and Opel 2006Elmer, Greg, and Andy Opel 2006 “Surviving the Inevitable Future: Preemption in an Age of Faulty Intelligence.” Cultural Studies 20 (4–5): 477–492. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Anghie and Hill (2004Anghie, Antony, and Charles Hill 2004 “The Bush Administration Preemption Doctrine and the United Nations.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law) 98: 326–31. http://​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/25659945. DOI logo, 326) also contend that political discourses justify and legitimise preemptive reactions and measures in terms of the “anticipatory self-defense” to use force by a party which has merely predicted the existence of a threat.

There is a growing body of scholarship in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) on the construction of future in political discourses (Basarati 2022Basarati, Ali 2022 “Preempting the Past: How the Future Space Unfolds in Political Discourse of Iran.” Discourse & Society 33 (2): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2007 2007 “Emerging Threats and Coming Dangers”. In Discourse, War and Terrorism, ed. by Adam Hodges, and Chad Nilep, 19–43. Amesterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2014 2014 “American Ways of Organizing the World: Designing the Global Future through US National Security Policy.” In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Christopher Hart, and Piotr Cap, 321–345. London/New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar; Graham 2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2002 2002 “Predication and Propagation: A Method for Analyzing Evaluative Meanings in Technology Policy.” Text & Talk 22 (2): 227–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Jaworski and Fitzgerald 2008Jaworski, Adam, and Richard Fitzgerald 2008 “This Poll Has Not Happened Yet: Temporal Play in Election Predictions.” Discourse & Communication 2 (1): 5–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, amongst others). The study of linguistic and discursive means of alternative future construction is a significant task for CDA mainly because the future space is implicated in ideological policy programmes of the dominant political elite to control the society and suppress the oppositional ways of being and acting.

The above studies have been particularly involved in investigating the discursive practices that envisage scenarios for the future in order to enact ideologically-loaded social realities. Graham (2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2002 2002 “Predication and Propagation: A Method for Analyzing Evaluative Meanings in Technology Policy.” Text & Talk 22 (2): 227–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) is concerned with the pre-configuration of multifarious facets of actual and potential spaces in the future that are employed to enact commodification and ownership in the language of the global technology. In his studies, Graham (2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2002 2002 “Predication and Propagation: A Method for Analyzing Evaluative Meanings in Technology Policy.” Text & Talk 22 (2): 227–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) investigates how future-oriented hortatory policy language develops and promotes imperatives that put constraints on the future ways of behaviour. Dunmire (2005)Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar is concerned with the rhetorical and ideological functions of political discourses in representing their ideologically-loaded visions of the future as universal and common-sense perceptions. Besides, Dunmire (2005)Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar examines how political discourses construe competing visions of future in terms of alternative scenarios of the futures to control and shape the public perception of the future. Focused on temporal plays in predicting the results of the election, Jaworski and Fitzgerald (2008)Jaworski, Adam, and Richard Fitzgerald 2008 “This Poll Has Not Happened Yet: Temporal Play in Election Predictions.” Discourse & Communication 2 (1): 5–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar study the discursive strategies the British Conservative Party presidents employ to construe the scenarios for the post-election future. Basarati (2022)Basarati, Ali 2022 “Preempting the Past: How the Future Space Unfolds in Political Discourse of Iran.” Discourse & Society 33 (2): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar examines how the Iranian Supreme Leader construes the alternative futures of Iran in light of past-to-present threats cast by the THEM group. Basarati (2022)Basarati, Ali 2022 “Preempting the Past: How the Future Space Unfolds in Political Discourse of Iran.” Discourse & Society 33 (2): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar shows that the discourse of the Iranian Supreme Leader construes the oppositional future as in tandem with the revitalisation of the Iran’s past status (before the 1979 Islamic Revolution). The privileged future, however, is construed to be bound to the successful operationalisation of the ideological and material policy options that Iran’s Leader designates against the construed threats.

The studies we reviewed in this section indicate that the construal of the future and its contesting visions has accounted for certain cardinal factors such as policy options (including preemptive policies), evaluations of the present, and reconstructions of the past states of affairs. These factors enforce and enact their own influence upon the construal of the ontological and epistemological aspects of the future. Given the interlocked relations between these factors, we shall add theoretical and analytical rigour to Cap’s framework by examining the logico-rhetorical and discursive relations that policy options and past-to-present evaluations have with alternative futures, and determine how these factors trigger particular pragma-linguistic properties to construe the future.

3.Analytical frameworks

3.1Analytical toolkits for alternative futures in political discourses

The discursive construction of alternative futures in political communications enables politicians to rearticulate controversial and much-debated political issues so as to obtain ideological and political voice and power (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In the framework to examine the alternative futures, Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar proposes two groups of analytical tools: logico-rhetorical and pragma-linguistic toolkits. In the following sections, we shall briefly go over these analytical toolkits.

3.1.1Logico-rhetorical tools

Rhetorical Structure Theory: Developed by Mann and Thompson (1988)Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar, Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) claims that different parts of texts are organised mainly on functional grounds. RST provides a systematic approach that “describes the relations between text parts in functional terms, identifying both the transition point of a relation and the extent of the items related” (Mann and Thompson 1988Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar, 243). According to Mann and Thompson (1988)Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar, there are no explicit and pigeonholed set of categories of grammatical and lexical markers to indicate the relations between the propositions and clauses. RST involves 15 classes of relations, for instance Circumstance, Solutionhood, Evidence and Justify, Anti-thesis and Concession, and others (for further details, see Mann and Thompson 1988Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar, 250). Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar finds RST beneficial to the analysis of oppositional and privileged futures. This is mainly because strategic representation of US-Others visions particularly on oppositional and privileged futures “are not only self-legitimizing devices, but also effective ploys of discourse comprehension, thus taking the legitimating function even further” (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 333).

Consistency and Credibility: The notion of consistency contributes a great deal to investigating the rhetorical appeal of alternative futures in political discourses. The consistency theory posits that credibility effect lies at the heart of consistency; i.e., the credibility effect increases if a (political) speaker’s discourse would be compliant with addressees’ social, psychological, political, and ideological predilections (see Festinger 1957Festinger, Leon 1957A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). The credibility increases over time and this is mainly because humans are endowed with a particular psychological and mental faculty to seek consistency in beliefs (Cap 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 10). People try to “establish internal harmony, consistency or congruity among his opinions, attitudes, knowledge and values” (Festinger 1957Festinger, Leon 1957A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 260); therefore, they are less likely to accept messages that are at odds with their social, political, psychological and ideological predispositions (Festinger 1957Festinger, Leon 1957A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 261). However, whenever confronted with such a new message, people try to realise any positive point or aspect of the message so as to inernalise it (Cap 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 10). This allows for the increase in credibility and acceptance over time which is the main reason why Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar adopts consistency and credibility to the study of alternative futures: “alternative futures carry […] essentially black-and-white, even simplistic visions, which easily add to the rationality and credibility of the speaker” (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 334).

Cheater Detection and Displays of Coherence: In the area of evolutionary psychology, ‘Cheater Detection Module’ (CDM) is one of the most important logico-rhetorical cognitive devices, which contributes to studying the alternative futures. CDM is widely understood as a logico-rhetorical device in humans’ cognitive system to prevent the acts of deception in reciprocal social exchanges through checking the speaker’s consistency and coherence. Cosmides (1989Cosmides, Leda 1989 “The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task.” Cognition 31 (3): 187–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 196) believes that the human mind is endowed with “inferential procedures that make one very good at detecting the entities cheating on a social contract”. However, CDM is not solely a defensive mechanism to prevent and detect cheating, but rather it also serves as a persuasive tool in communications and discourse events (Sperber 2000Sperber, D. 2000 “Metarepresentations in an Evolutionary Perspective.” In Metarepresentation: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. by Dan Sperber, 117–138. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 135). Sperber (2000Sperber, D. 2000 “Metarepresentations in an Evolutionary Perspective.” In Metarepresentation: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. by Dan Sperber, 117–138. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 135) posits that CDM enables (political) speakers to penetrate the cheater detecting potentialities of addresses in communicative acts so that they can influence and manipulate the visions of their addresses. Justifying the contribution of CDM to the study of alternative futures, Cap (2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 335) notes that CDM “points to the crucial role of lexical choices used to sequence, compare, contrast or otherwise connect the textual forms expressing alternative visions”.

3.1.2Lexico-grammatical and pragmatic properties

Grammatical Mood: Grammatical Mood plays a pivotal role in sentences and phrases construing alternative futures. Based on her findings, Dunmire (2011) 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar argues that the oppositional future is construed via interrogative mood whilst the privileged future is construed by means of declarative and sometimes interrogative mood. However, following Hodge and Kress (1988)Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress 1988Social Semiotics, Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar, Dunmire (2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 106) notes that interrogative mood is used in lieu of other moods, such as declarative or impetrative. This is mainly because “these alternatives embed role structures and relations for participants that are often not acceptable, appropriate, or rhetorically effective in a given speech situation” (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 106). Dunmire (2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 106; see also Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 335) further adds that these alternatives provide various roles to actor/participants regarding the given event, including “requester of information or action or as the provider of information or the doer of action”. From a pragmatic standpoint, using interrogative mood signals the speaker’s understanding of the situation that not all his/her addressees approve his/her position and further elaboration and justification is necessary (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 106; see also Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 335). In the construal of the alternative futures, Cap (2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 335) states that a sentence or phrase articulated in declarative mood follows interrogative mood in order to provide “evidence to dispel doubts” or strengthen the speaker’s rationality and knowledge regarding the situation. This knowledge strengthens the speaker’s position to justify and enact his articulation of the privileged future (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

Modality and Nominalisation: The notion of modality in the study of alternative futures in political discourses exceeds the conventional modal auxiliary (would, could, should, etc.; Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 100). Following Hodge and Kress (1988)Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress 1988Social Semiotics, Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar, the conception of modality involves the entirety of social semiotics. In this sense, Hodge and Kress (1988Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress 1988Social Semiotics, Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar, 122) believe that modality is a notion that describes a participant’s stance in a social semiotic process, the categorisation of social process, relations, and states of affairs that the participant accepts. Hodge and Kress (1988)Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress 1988Social Semiotics, Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar believe that modality is present in any semiotic act; it “points to the social construction or contestation of knowledge system” (Hodge and Kress 1988Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress 1988Social Semiotics, Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar, 123). Cap (2020) 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar asserts that the construal of alternative futures in political discourses is followed by contestations over the reality of the future. This contestation is articulated via varying degrees of epistemic modality. Accordingly, political discourse conceptualises the oppositional future as a possible and potential by means of probabilistic lexical item such as ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘hope’, ‘wonder’, ‘worry’ or ‘argue’ (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 502; see also Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 336). Through these choices, the oppositional future is construed as “equivocal, uncertain, deriving from lack of knowledge” (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 336). Regarding agency, the oppositional future involves the representation of the entities of the Us camp in positive stance and the entities of THEM group as threat generating (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Quite to the contrary, drawing upon evidence, history, and reason, the privileged future is construed through an oracular stance and is constructed via “absolute modality”. This involves lexical items and lexico-grammatical elements such as ‘is’, ‘will be’ or ‘has to’, expressing the modality of categorial truth (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 502).

In political discourses, nominalisations such as ‘danger’ or ‘threat’ conflate the present and future through describing the present moment as entangled with threats and projecting the future in such a way that ‘can’, ‘may’, ‘will’ or ‘should’ stem from the preset state of affairs (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 95–6). However, unlike the verbal forms, such as ‘threaten’ conveying temporal features and degrees of likelihood, certainty, volition, and so forth, nominalisations do not carry explicit temporal or modality imports (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 63). Therefore, the nominal item such as ‘threat’ stresses the presentness and imminence of ‘threaten’ and can “suppress its future, as a yet-to-be-realized dimension, thereby rendering the threat as imminent” (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 63; see also Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 337). From a pragma-rhetorical standpoint, nominalisation’s lack of temporal and modal dimensions adds to the speaker’s options to present his/her particular vision on alternative futures (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). As a matter of fact, the nominalisation of ‘threat’ condenses the prospective insight through what the speaker endorses to project or justify his/her contesting visions on the future.

Evidentiality: Generally, evidentiality refers to the source of information; it shows how we get to know something (Aikhenvald 2004Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Concerned with the scenarios of alternative futures, evidentiality is influenced by the particular mood and modality features. According to Cap (2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 338), the lexico-grammatical structures are “used to construe evidential contrasts complement the linguistic forms enacting mood and modality in their contributions to the speaker’s displays of coherence, credibility and potential leadership.” In this connection, evidential contrasts distinguish oppositional futures from privileged future according to the source of evidence/information employed to construe alternative futures (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 502; 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 111–12). To construe the oppositional futures, the information remains unsupported by concrete, tangible evidence, and is projected “through mental and verbal process clauses […] which encode that future within a modality of ‘hope’, ‘wonder’, and ‘argument’” (Dunmire 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 112). In contrast, privileged future is construed through “an oracular stance” and grounded in reality and supported by absolute modality and declarative mood (Dunmire 2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 502; 2011 2011Projecting the Future through Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 112).

3.2Proximisation theory

The concept of ‘proximisation’ has been used in cognitive approaches to critical discourse analysis (Cap 2014 2014 “Expanding CDS Methodology by Cognitive-Pragmatic Tools: Proximization Theory and Public Space Discourses.” In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Christopher Hart, and Piotr Cap, 189–210. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar). Proposed by Cap (2006Cap, Piotr 2006Legitimization in Political Discourse: A Cross Disciplinary Perspective on the Modern US War Rhetoric. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars PressGoogle Scholar, 2008 2008 “Towards the Proximization Model of the Analysis of Legitimization in Political Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (1): 17–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2010 2010 “Axiological Aspects of Proximization.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 392–407. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), Proximisation Theory (PT) has been applied in various areas of study, including the investigation of coercive rhetoric in the political discourses (Basarati and Rezaei 2019Basarati, Ali, and Hadaegh Rezaei 2019 “Discursive Manufacturing of Iranophobia and Global Preemptive Collaboration in Trump’s Discourse.” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 11 (1): 57–83.Google Scholar; Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2015), threat communication (Ozyumenko and Larina 2021Ozyumenko, I. Vladimir, and T. V. Larina 2021 “Threat and Fear: Pragmatic Purposes of Emotionalisation in Media Discourse.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 25 (3): 746–766. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Sancho 2018Sancho, G. Carmen 2018 “The Emotional Prosody of US Fatal Air-Accident Dockets Online: Risking Risk Communication?Russian Journal of Linguistics 22 (1): 126–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Weiss 2017Weiss, Daniel 2017 “Threat Scenarios in the Ukraine Conflict.” International Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies and Environmental Communication 6 (2): 16–24.Google Scholar), the construction of alternative futures (Basarati 2022Basarati, Ali 2022 “Preempting the Past: How the Future Space Unfolds in Political Discourse of Iran.” Discourse & Society 33 (2): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), transcultural political communications (Chen et al. 2020Chen, Linjuon, Danyang Zhang, Yingfei He, and Guoliang Zhang 2020 “Transcultural Political Communication from the Perspective of Proximization Theory: A Comparative Analysis on the Corpuses of the Sino–US Trade War.” Discourse & Communication 14 (4): 341–361. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), health discourse (Cap 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Li and Gong 2022Li, Ke, and Xiaonan Gong 2022 “Proximization: A Critical Cognitive Analysis of Health Security Discourse.” Text & Talk 42 (5): 713–734. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), anti-immigration discourse (Cap 2018 2018 “Spatial Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by John Flowerdew, and John Richardson, 92–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar), environmental discourse (Mando and Stack 2019Mando, Justin, and Garrett Stack 2019 “Convincing the Public to Kill: Asian Carp and the Proximization of Invasive Species Threat.” Environmental Communication 13 (6): 820–833. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), and digital media discourse (Kopytowska 2022Kopytowska, Monika 2022 “Proximization, Prosumption and Salience in Digital Discourse: On the Interface of Social Media Communicative Dynamics and the Spread of Populist Ideologies.” Critical Discourse Studies 19 (2): 144–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), amongst others. Proximisation is “a discursive strategy of presenting physically and temporally distant events and affairs […] as increasingly and negatively consequential to the speaker, and her addressee” (Cap 2018 2018 “Spatial Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by John Flowerdew, and John Richardson, 92–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar, 97). ‘Proximisation’ in Cap’s (2013) 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar terms adds towards the speaker’s options to solicit legitimisation for certain actions and/or policies to neutralise the cumulating threat of the deictically peripherised (distant) entity (see Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2017 2017The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2018 2018 “Spatial Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by John Flowerdew, and John Richardson, 92–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar; Chilton 2004Chilton, Paul 2004Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2014 2014Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). PT holds that the threat comes from the entities at the periphery of the discourse space, known as ‘Outside-Deictic-Centre’ (ODCs; foreigners, enemies, evils, they, Others). Cap (2013) 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar indicates that the movement and proximisation of the distant entity (ODC) to the central one (IDC) in the discourse space is systematically organised in terms of a three-dimensional deictic conceptualisation of Spatio-Temporal and Axiological axes (STA). This means that proximisation is represented in terms of the conceptual axes.

Spatial proximisation involves a forced construction in which distant entities (ODCs) encroach physically upon the central entities of the discourse space (Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Temporal Proximisation (TP), in Cap’s own terms, is a “forced construal of the envisaged conflict as not only impending, but also momentous, historic and thus needing immediate response and unique preventive measures” (Cap 2018 2018 “Spatial Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by John Flowerdew, and John Richardson, 92–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar, 97). By using analogies, spatial and temporal proximisation conflate the present cumulating threat with the actual past catastrophic events to reinforce the threat construal and (re-)gain legitimisation for some preemptive/preventive policies and/or actions. Axiological Proximisation (AP) is a forced construal and embodiment of the ideological mismatches, conflicts, and/or collisions between the constructed values of the home (IDC) values and the values of the constructed peripheral entity (ODC; Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). As a compensatory discursive tool, thus, AP seeks to maintain the legitimisation of the enacted/under-negotiation pre-emptive agenda in the absence or breakdown of the other two strategies, namely spatial and temporal proximisations (see Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

Proximisation strategies have undeniable correlations with soliciting legitimisation; i.e., proximisation strategies instigate fear and anxiety, thereby motivating to obtain legitimation to preventive/pre-emptive arrangements so as to keep the discourse space (DS) safe and secure from the presumed destructive and catastrophic impact of the ODC.

4.Methodology

In this paper, we incorporate PT (Cap 2013 2013Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) with the framework for Alternative Futures in Political Discourses. The main rationale behind this incorporation is that the construal of alternative futures in political discourses involves threat constructions and fear generation in terms of the construals of oppositional futures that pose certain threats to and barricade the materialisation of the privileged vision of the future. With the possibility of the oppositional future to be materialised, thus, the present time turns out as the only temporal locus to adopt and operationalise due preemptive measures. On these accounts, employing PT provides us with a rich analytical toolkit to mull over how different aspects of the construed threats (i.e., the axiological and spatio-temporal mechanisms of proximisation), as embodied in terms of the oppositional future, invoke political speakers to justify, rationalise, and legitimise preemptive policies. Equally important is the contribution of PT to the temporal aspects of the threats. That is to say, PT illumines how the threatening status quo and past events give rise to the visions of the future and how the conceptual timeframe between present and future is symbolically compressed to endorse the implementation of preemptive policies. Meanwhile, the framework Alternative Futures in Political Discourses provides a hybrid account of analytical tools from neighbouring disciplines such as Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Cognitive Linguistics, Pragmatics, and Dialogue Studies to address both linguistic and extralinguistic aspects of the construals of alternative futures. The capacities of this framework enable us to see the ideological visions of political speakers in articulating the content of both privileged and oppositional futures and conceptualising the degrees of necessity and/or certainty of their materialisation.

Both PT and Alternative Futures in Political Discourses work together to analyse the interplay of variables such as evaluations of the present, reconstructions of the past, and preemptive measures in the construal of alternative futures with varying epistemological stances. The integration of these two frameworks provides full-fledged accounts of multifaceted discursive mechanisms of alternative futures construction. Therefore, these two are needed since analysing alternative futures in political discourses cannot be simply reduced to determining the ideologically loaded visions of political speakers that enact the content of privileged and oppositional futures as well as their epistemological stance without accounting for the complicated interaction of the factors that are actively at work with constructing the futures. The findings of this study will add more rigour to the theoretical and analytical aspects of the framework to account for the interrelationships of present and past reconstructions, preemptive policies, and alternative futures, and also the modality properties by which the opposite visions of the future are articulated.

The data for the present study comes form twenty speeches, remarks, press briefings, and conferences of Donald Trump, extending from 2017 to 2020, specifically focused the Iran Deal. Of this number, there are only three speeches and press conferences wherein the Iran Deal and Iran’s nuclear programmes are discussed amongst different security issues of the US. These three speeches include President Trump’s speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit (May 21, 2017), remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel in a joint press conference (February 15, 2017), and remarks by President Trump and President Putin in a joint press conference (July 8, 2018). We opted for the excerpts from this dataset subsuming the construals of Iran’s nuclear programmes and regional policies in the Middle East as well as the explication of certain policies, including sanctions on Iran’s political elites, military organisations, the financial sector, and oil industry. The rationale behind selecting Trump’s speeches on Iran affair lies in the fact that in this period Trump withdrew from a hard-won and long-awaited-for deal Iran made with P5+1 countries during Barak Obama’s administration. Trump was dramatically critical of this deal and called it a “defective deal”. It was not until this period that Trump’s discourse employed coercive rhetoric on Iran’s nuclear programmes and sought for putting maximum pressure on Iran to re-negotiate the nuclear programmes. Accordingly, this data set appears to be a fine locus to scrutinise how alternative futures are construed regarding Iran affairs in the US political discourse. All the speeches can be retrieved form https://​trumpwhitehouse​.archives​.gov/.

We analyse the data according to the analytical procedures and toolkit of PT and Alternative Futures in Political Discourses. In this respect, first, we shall analyse Trump’s description of Iran’s past and present activities and policies and how they invoke Trump’s so-called preemptive policies. Later, we shall deal with the visions of the future and the shifts in their modality properties (epistemological perspectives) due to the influence of past and present description and evaluations, preemptive measures, evidential credibility of the political speaker’s position, and the agency in materialising the privileged and/or oppositional futures.

5.Data analysis

In this section, we shall examine how Trump’s descriptions of Iran’s past-to-present actions and policies lend themselves to the conceptualisation of the scene as fraught with Iran’s persistent threats proximising over the US territory and values. Later, we shall explore how these past-to-present evaluations trigger and instigate the emergence of preemptive policies to insulate the future from the construed threats. Next, we shall be particularly involved with scrutinising the main functions preemptive policies play in regard with the realisation of alternative future. Finally, we shall examine the epistemology of alternative future in dialectical relation with the above factors.

5.1The now and past of Iran

The discourse of Donald Trump on Iran predominantly features coercive and threat-based rhetoric which is characterising the IRI as a threat-generating entity in the Middle East. The Excerpts (1)–(4) below construe the symbolic US-THEM antagonistic relationships on the one hand and describe Iran as casting security threats to the US interests and allies on the other. Thus, the construal of Iran as such can lend itself to analysis through the lens of proximisation.

(1)

It [Iran] develops, deploys, and proliferates missiles that threaten American troops and our allies Oct. 13, 2017

(2)

It [Iran] enables Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other terrorists to sow chaos and kill innocent people. Jan. 12, 2018

(3)

Iran enables Hezbollah to build an arsenal of weapons that threaten Israel May 11, 2018

(4)

The Iranian regime has threatened United States military service members, diplomats, and civilians, as well as the citizens and interests of our allies and partners, through military force and proxy members. Jan. 10, 2020

In these excerpts, the THEM space (ODC) contains the nominal items “Iran”, referred to by pronominal item “it” in (1) and (2), and “the Iranian regime” (4). Also, within this space are other member items such as “Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other terrorists…” (2) along with Iran. At the centre of the discourse space, however, the US symbolic space (IDC) accommodates “American troops and our allies” (1), “Israel” (3), and “United States military service members, diplomats and civilians…” (4).

Trump’s discourse represents an implacably hostile picture of Iran. This insight is grounded upon threat-construing rhetorical patterns, conceptualising spatial proximisation of various categories of threat. In Excerpts (1)–(4), the verb phrases (VPs) connoting series of provocative and threat-inducing actions against the IDC, conceptualise Iran’s spatial proximisation in terms of advancing military and missile power (“It [Iran] develops, deploys, and proliferates missiles…” [1]), reinforcing and sponsoring Jihadi and terrorist organisations financially and logistically (“It [Iran] enables Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other…” [2] and “…Iran enables Hezbollah to build an arsenal…” [3]), and disturbing the security of American forces and allies (“The Iranian regime has threatened United States military service members…” [4]). Such construals imply that Iran’s so-called threats, instantiating spatial proximisation, are intended to yield critical challenges to the security, stability, and peace in the Middle East. The very intention is communicated through the infinitive clauses of purpose in Excerpts (2) and (3): “to sow chaos and kill innocent people…” (2) and “…to build an arsenal of weapons that threaten Israel…” (3).

Taking temporal aspects into account, the IRI is conceptualised as spatially proximising the present of the IDC space. The use of simple aspect (“It develops, deploys and proliferates…” [1]; “Iran enables Hezbollah, Hamas, and…” [2]; “Iran enables Hezbollah to build an arsenal of weapons…” [3]) and perfective aspect of verbs (“The Iranian regime has threatened United States…” [4]) connotes the steadfastness and perpetuity of the threats that characterise the features of the present time. Important to this construal is that the temporal aspect of threat proximisation does not point to any conceptual terminal point of threat. Rather, the features of steadfastness and perpetuity imply that the threats potentially push their ways into the future.

The presentness of the construed threats, however, does not mean that they are bumped into the present time out of nowhere. Rather, as it can be inferred from Trump’s discourse, the present is the temporary destination for threats that are creeping from the past. In this connection, the historical flashbacks in Excerpts (5)–(9) below recall the details of real past tragic events and also make up an image of Iran as an entity that has persistently threatened the US (the IDC space) by series of threatening actions over years. Such construals leave the gates open to infer that the IRI’s present-time ontological reality, as a threatening entity, grows upon its historical activities and functions in political relations in the Middle East.

(5)

Beginning in 1979, agents of Iranian regime illegally seized the U.S embassy in Tehran and had more than 60 Americans hostage during 444 days of crisis

(6)

The Iranian backed terrorist group Hezbollah twice bombed our embassy in Lebanon- once in 1983 and again in 1984

(7)

In 1996, the regime directed another bombing of American military housing in Saudi Arabia, murdering 19 Americans in cold blood

(8)

The regime harbored high-level terrorists in the wake of 9/11 attacks, including Osama Bin Laden’s son

(9)

In Iran and Afghanistan, groups supported by Iran has killed hundreds of American military personnel Oct. 13, 2017

In Excerpts (5)–(9), the temporal prepositional phrases (“in 1979” [5]; “in 1983 and again in 1984” [6]; “in 1996” [7]; “in the wake of 9/11” [8]) deictically give reference to Iran’s actions and policies with respect to the US in different historical points. These deictic temporal points contribute to periodising Iran’s (threatening) actions and conceptualising its past-to-present proximisation to the vicinity of speaker’s territory. This construal conceptualises the continuity and persistence of Iran’s threats to the IDC zone by the chronological ordering of tragic events stretched to the proximity of the present.

Accordingly, Excerpts (1)–(9) express the historical ontological status of the IRI in light of the proximising and perpetuating spatial threats. The spatio-temporal properties and characteristics of the IRI’s proximisation have two important implications: On the one hand, they give rise to a body of knowledge to depict the IRI as an aggressive entity and a growing threat to the present and future of IDC space. On the other hand, they invoke the speaker to necessitate and rationalise the employment of preemptive measures to preempt the IRI’s proximising and growing threats. The latter is given further currency by the implied assumption that Iran’s threats will be more serious and reach out to the future unless prevented by due preemptive actions and policies.

5.2The preemptive policies

The main rationale behind the US preemptive policies (in Excerpts [10]–[17]) is to deprive the IRI of all the elements of its power resources that are liable to further perpetuate the present threats or to generate new ones. These preemptive policies are more focused upon putting economic and political pressures on Iran with a hope to entangle Iranian topmost authorities and leaders to abandon their so-called threatening behaviours and policies in the Middle East. The following excerpts outline the main directions of preemptive measures.

(10)

Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government, they deserve… May 21, 2017

(11)

The execution of our strategy begins with the long-overdue step of imposing tough sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Oct. 13, 2017

(12)

We have sanctioned nearly 100 individuals and entities involved with Iranian regime ballistic missile program.

(13)

We are cutting off the regime’s money flows to terrorists. Jan. 12, 2018

(14)

We will be installing the highest level of economic sanctions. May 8, 2018

Excerpts (10)–(14) indicate two major pillars of the US preemptive policies issued by Trump’s administration to preempt Iran’s threats. These measures pervasively involve mainly all-embracing economic sanctions (“…our strategy begins with the long overdue step of imposing tough sanctions…” [11]; “We have sanctioned nearly 100 individuals and entities…” [12]; “We are cutting off the regime’s money flows…” [13]; “We will be installing the highest level of economic sanctions…” [14]) and globally-collaborated political isolation of Iran (“…all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran…” [10]). What is at stake about these preemptive measures is that they are aimed at enforcing a change in the present states of affairs with Iran and making Iranian authorities break with the past. The preemptive measures are construed along with certain objectives and purposes that can be taken as the representative of the change and also a solid ground to construct a future with desired or privileged reality. The politics of preemption strives to insulate the desired/privileged future from the construed threats by preventing them in the present; therefore, preemptive measures accelerate the occurrence of change and construction of the privileged states of affairs in the future. But, what does the privileged future look like under the force of the preemptive policies?

5.3The privileged future

The preemptive measures in Trump’s discourse are expected to bring about positive and desired states of the affair in the future. In fact, in an attempt to gain the utmost legitimisation for the preemptive measures, Trump’s discourse resorts to depicting a utopia-like future (Excerpts [16]–[18]), de-weaponised and nonviolent future (Excerpts [15] and [19]), and the future of political behaviour change (Excerpt [19]) as resultant states of affairs in the future with respect to the IRI.

(15)

My administration imposes new sanctions on Iran, and I will do more to prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapon. Feb. 15, 2017

(16)

We hope that our actions will help bring about a future of peace, stability, and prospering in the Middle East.

(17)

We hope that these new measures directed at the Iranian dictatorship will compel the government to reduce its pursuit of terror.

(18)

We pray for a future where young children … can grow in a world free from violence, hatred, and terror. Oct. 13, 2017

(19)

I also emphasized the importance of placing pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear ambition and to stop its campaign of violence. July 16, 2018

(20)

These punishing economic sanctions will remain until the Iranian regime changes its behavior Jan., 10, 2020

In Excerpts (15)–(20), the privileged future in Trump’s discourse on Iran is delineated in terms of three major elements, including, the prevention of Iran’s development of nuclear programmes (“…to prevent Iran from ever-developing nuclear weapons…” [15]; “…to halt its nuclear ambition…” [19]), Iran’s commitment to peaceful and non-violent behaviours and approaches (“…to reduce its pursuit of terror…” [17]; “…to stop its campaign of violence…” [19]; “…until the Iranian regime changes its behavior…” [20]), and the birth of a peaceful situation in the Middle East (“…will help bring about a future of peace and stability…” [16]; “…a future where young children … can grow in a world free from violence, hatred and terror…” [18]). These three main elements construct the outline of the privileged future in regard with the IRI.

Excerpts (15)–(20) indicate that the objectives of the preemptive measures make up the reality of the privileged future and mark a dramatic change with the present state of the IRI. The privileged future, thus, appears as the corollary or consequences of particular polices designated to preempt Iran’s threats. It shows that the privileged configuration of the future depends upon the implementation of preemptive measures. This rhetorical relation is predominantly triggered by articulating the future-construing clauses through purposive clauses (“…to prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons…” [15]; “…to halt its nuclear ambition and to stop its campaign of violence…” [19]); as the argument of verbs with causative meaning (“…bring about a future of peace, stability and…” [16]; “…will compel the government to reduce its pursuit of terror…” [17]), as the argument of optative verbs (“…we pray for a future where…young children…” [18]), and, finally, as the argument of a subordinating conjunction (“…until the Iranian regime changes its behaviors…” [20]).

The rhetorical and lexico-grammatical structures through which the privileged future is articulated modifies the modality properties of the privileged future. Construed both as consequent and subordinate to the preemptive measures, the privileged future is articulated via probable, tentative, and less certain epistemic modality, implying a state of affair whose realisation is by no means guaranteed.

The modification of the privileged future as such is triggered by particular lexico-grammatical elements in Excerpts (15)–(20): in excerpts “…my administration imposes … to prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons…” (15) and “I also emphasized … to halt its nuclear ambition and to stop its campaign of violence…” (19), for instance, the privileged future is construed through subordinate purposive clauses whose function, as Palmer (2001)Palmer, Frank R. 2001Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar notes, is very likely of subjunction. The subjunctive state of future-construing clauses expresses the imagined or wished states of affairs “whose factual state is not known or the propositions relate to unrealized events” (Palmer 2001Palmer, Frank R. 2001Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 13). Given that, the subjunctive structures conceptualise the privileged future in terms of less certain, probable, and tentative epistemic modality, casting a probabilistic look at the realisation of the states of affairs that mark the overall picture of the privileged future. However, such epistemic judgment of the speaker on the realisation of the privileged future must not overshadow the necessity of its realisation as an affair/event with an element of speaker’s will to which s/he “has an interest in an event either occurring or non-occurring” (Heine 1995Heine, Bernd 1995 “Agent-oriented vs. Epistemic Modality.” In Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by John Bybee, and Suzanne Fleischman, 32–17. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 29). The main locus of this necessity and force is positioned in the assigned function of the privileged future to trigger a transition state from an era fraught with Iran’s threats to a less threatening and more peaceful state. On these accounts, there is a deontic modality of necessity or, to put it in technical terminology, obligative modality modifying the privileged futures (see Palmer 2001Palmer, Frank R. 2001Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 8–13) and “generating imperatives for action” (Lemke 1995Lemke, Jay L. 1995Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar, 42 cited in Graham 2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 770). This tendency in projecting the privileged future towards necessity instantiate what Graham (2001Graham, Phil 2001 “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society 12 (6): 761–788. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 770) calls “metaphorical evaluative transfer in policy genre”. Accordingly, as is shown, the expectations regarding the realisation of the privileged future metaphorically transfers from probability to necessity in Trump’s discourse. Therefore, we argue that the articulation of the privileged future via subordinate purposive clauses is partly deontic and partly epistemic, implying that enforcing preemptive measures to thwart Iran’s threats is necessary and obligatory, but that the privileged future will come out as a final product is a yet-to-be-seen matter.

In another instance, Excerpt (20) articulates the privileged future as an anticipated state of affair through subjunctive mood. In this instance, the future-construing clause is positioned as an argument of a subordinating conjunction “unless” which projects the subjunctive meaning of anticipation onto the reality of the privileged future. In these construals, however, the materialisation of the reality of the privileged future (“…the Iranian regime changes its behavior…” [20]) is construed as depending upon the will and potentiality of the subject (“the Iranian regime”). In (20), the realisation of the privileged future is subject-oriented rather than speaker-oriented since the subject of realising the privileged future is deictically projected onto to the noun phrase “the Iranian regime”. In this, the speaker takes a position that has no control over the actions of the subject (the Iranian regime). In this sense, therefore, Excerpt (20) articulates the privileged future with dynamic modality which “relates to the ability or willing, which comes from the individual concerned” (Palmer 2001Palmer, Frank R. 2001Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 10). Besides, given the conceptualisation of the speaker’s judgment on the realisation of the privileged future, these two instances involve probabilistic and tentative epistemic modality which derives from the subordinate position in the clause and the subjunctive mood, articulating the reality of the privileged future within an irrealis conceptual space. Likewise, in Excerpts (16)–(18), the semantic property of optative verbs “hope” (Excerpts [16] and [17]) and “pray for” (Excerpt [18]) articulate the privileged future in terms of mediated uncertain and probable modality. In other words, these optative verbs articulate the privileged future through subjunctive mood and in the same vein, conceptualise it as an imagined affair. This is in stark contrast with the findings of Dunmire (2005)Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, in which the verbal process clauses and modality of ‘hope’ and ‘wonder’ present the oppositional future. Dunmire’s (2005Dunmire, Patricia L. 2005 “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 16 (4): 481–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 202) analyses indicate that the privileged future is grounded upon reality and is projected through the unmediated epistemic modality and oracular evidential stance.

Besides the lexico-grammatical triggers, logico-rhetorical relations in discourse contribute to the modification of the privileged future construals with uncertain, probable, and tentative epistemic modality as well as deontic and dynamic modalities. These relations figure in a triadic relationship amongst Iran’s past-to-present threats, preemptive measures, and the privileged future. In this triangular relationship, the preemptive measures are envisaged to render threatening past and present to the privileged states of affairs in the future. But, to put it in logico-rhetorical terms, the historical knowledge on Iran’s past-to-present threats serves as a Background Knowledge (Mann and Thompson 1988Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar) to portray the status quo as fraught with Iran’s threats and dangers. This provides the non-volitional cause and the main impetus so as to adopt preemptive measures and policies with an aim to mark privileged changes in the future of the IRI. In the last loop, the privileged future appears as a the ‘Non-Volitional Result’ (Mann and Thompson 1988Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar) of the operationalisation of the preemptive measures. The non-volitionality of the privileged future stems from the fact that preemptive policies do not solely and independently cause the situation presented in terms of the privileged future. Rather, they are influenced by the considerations of the past-to-present threats and their impacts on the future as well as complicated political calculations on how to issue the preemptive measures.

5.4The oppositional future

In Trump’s discourse, Iran’s nuclear programme is construed as the main ground to cause multifarious threats to the security, peace, and stability in the Middle East. Insofar as the oppositional future figures in “strategic conceptualisation of imminence of external threat” (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 330), the very construal of the situation in regard with Iran is liable to be regarded as the oppositional future that casts prospective threats to the US camp. Accordingly, the reality of the oppositional future subsumes social-psychological predicaments (“…we know what the future will bring- more suffering and despair…” [21]) and proliferation of dangerous weapons (“…the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring ….” [22]).

Same as the construal of the privileged future, outlining the main reality of the oppositional future provides the main impetus and also strong argumentative ground to legitimise and necessitate preemptive measures and policies. However, unlike the privileged future, the realisation of the oppositional future is also construed as the result of possible inaction and passive stance-taking in regard with the IRI’s threats and regional policies (“…if we don’t confront this deadly terror…” [21]; “…if I allowed this deal to stand…” [22]).

(21)

…If we do not confront this deadly terror, we know what the future will bring – more suffering and despair… May 21, 2017

(22)

If I allowed this deal to stand, there would be soon a nuclear arms race in the Middle East May 8, 2018

In Excerpts (21) and (22), looking from pragma-linguistic perspective, the oppositional futures are articulated through counterfactual structures (if-constructions), facilitating the speaker and the audience to talk about and imagine things that have not happened yet or may not happen at all. Conterfactuals construct mental representations that are modified with different degrees of epistemic modality. As Chilton (2014 2014Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 159) notes, counterfactuals “may be thought of as having the potential to express degrees of irreality, ranging from non-quite-certain about the near future to that which is counter to fact”. In (21), the putative future tense in the main clause communicates high epistemic certainty about the realisation of “more suffering and despair” in the near future (cf. Chilton 2014 2014Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 165). This epistemic certainty is further strengthened by perceptual evidential position that the speaker adopts in the main clause (“we know”), adding epistemic ‘real-ness’ to “more suffering” and “will happen” in the future. The construed oppositional future is real and certain in a counterfactual space, communicated via negated if-clause (“if we don’t…”), featured with inaction and lack of appropriate action against terror. It leads the audience to infer that if the states and international communities adopt preemptive measures, then the oppositional future will not happen and threats will be neutralised. In (22), the if-construction with past tense produces a counterfactual space in which Trump’s administration did not allow the Iran Deal to accomplish its objectives. This is the main reason that the main clause carrying the reality of the oppositional future is articulated with uncertain epistemic modality (“…there would be…”). It implies that Trump’s administration exercised a preemptive policy in the past by withdrawing from the Iran Deal and, as a result, a nuclear arms race did not happen.

The construals as such imply that the main function of preemptive measures is to blockade the materialisation of the oppositional future. By way of implication, this provides a strong ground for justifying and soliciting legitimisation for preemptive policies.

6.Concluding remarks

In this paper, we indicated that the construal of alternative futures in the US political discourse regarding Iran is modified by how Iran’s past and present policies and actions are perceived and how these perceptions invoke the political speaker to justify and legitimise preemptive policies. In this connection, we indicated that Trump’s discourse characterises Iran’s past and present as marked with threatening and provocative actions and policies against the US interests. Important to this construal is that the lexico-grammatical properties of the construals, such as infinitive clauses in (2) and (3) as well as their temporal aspects, including simple and perfective aspects of verbs in (1)–(4) not only connote the steadfastness and perpetuity of threats at the present time, but more importantly, they do not point at any conceptual terminal point of threats, thereby conceptualising them with prospective characteristics. This state stands in Background and Evidence logico-rhetorical relations with the construal of preemptive policies that, on the one hand, increase the audience’s understanding of the situation as threatening, and on the other, increase his/her belief in the speaker’s claim that preemptive policies are necessary to neutralise the prospective threats.

Preemptive policies in Trump’s discourse on Iran are expected to enforce a change in the Iran’s past-to-present state and construct a privileged future, involving a utopian state, a de-weaponised and peaceful situation in the Middle East, and behavioural change in Iranian authorities. The privileged future appears as the corollary of the successful operationalisation of the preemptive policies. Besides, these preemptive policies are construed to blockade the materialisation of certain threatening situations that construct the oppositional future, characterised by social-psychological predicaments and the proliferation of dangerous weapons.

In this paper, we indicated that the privileged future is articulated via probable, tentative, and less certain epistemic modality. This epistemic stance of the speaker stems from two main sources: the logico-rhetorical relations and the lexico-grammatical structure construing the privileged future. In connection with the former, the privileged future is construed as the non-volitional result and the corollary of certain preemptive measures. This relation implies that the realisation of the privileged future relies upon successful implementation of the preemptive policies. Such a conditional state decreases the certainty of the realisation of the privileged future and triggers the use of tentative, probable and less certain epistemic modality. Also, there are certain lexico-grammatical structures such as purposive clauses (Excerpts [15] and [19]), verbs with causative meaning (Excerpt [17]), optative verbs (Excerpt [18]), and subordinating conjunctions (Excerpt [20]) that articulate the privileged future with probabilistic epistemic stance.

The realisation of the privileged future is also construed as a necessary state of affair with which the speaker has an interest. In this connection, the privileged future is expected to trigger a transition state that renders an era characterised with Iran’s threats to a peaceful and less threatening state. This expectation from the privileged future leads us to interpret the realisation of the privileged future with deontic or obligative meaning. Therefore, we argue that the articulation of the privileged future is partly deontic and partly epistemic, implying that enforcing preemptive measures to thwart Iran’s threats is necessary and obligatory, but that the privileged future will come out as a final product is a yet-to-be-seen matter.

In the meantime, we also indicated that in Trump’s discourse, Iranian authorities in Excerpt (20) are construed as the subjects in charge of realising the privileged future. Accordingly, adopting such subject-oriented stance to the articulates the privileged futures with dynamic modality in which the will or ability of the individual concerned is central to the materialisation of an event. But, insofar as the speaker has no control and power over Iranian leadership, the realisation of the privileged future automatically becomes tentative, probable, and less certain.

Creating an aura of cumulating threat going beyond the present time and proximising the future, the oppositional future does a great deal to rationalise undertaking effective preemptive policies. To put it in logico-rhetorical terms, the oppositional future is in Justify relation (Mann and Thompson 1988Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson 1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar, 252) with the preemptive policies; it provides a strong argumentative ground for the political speaker to tell the audience why s/he believes that taking up preemptive policies is necessary. Besides, what adds to the speaker’s ability to convince the audience is through the creation of a mental space in which the oppositional future appears as the result of political inaction and inertia in preempting Iran’s threats.

The construal of the oppositional future, unlike the privileged insight, communicates high epistemic certainty when it comes to the construal of the results of inaction and inertia against Iran’s threats. This epistemic stance derives from the evidential position of the speaker who is perceived to ‘know’ the future of Iran’s threats (see Excerpt [21]).

The findings of the study suggest that the epistemic and deontic evaluations of both privileged and oppositional futures have to be studied in concert with other defining factors in giving shape to the alternative futures, such as historical knowledge and the role and function of preemptive measures. Our findings by no means dismiss the claim that the privileged future is articulated through unmediated absolute modality and oppositional futures via probabilistic modality (Cap 2020 2020 “Alternative Futures in Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 32 (3): 328–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Rather, we suggest that the alternative futures are products of profound network of relations that contribute to the modification of the epistemic evaluations of the speaker.

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Address for correspondence

Hadaegh Rezaei

Department of Linguistics

Faculty of Foreign Language

University of Isfahan

Isfahan

Iran

[email protected]

Biographical notes

Ali Basarati is a PhD candidate in General Linguistics at University of Isfahan, Iran. He is also working as an adjunct lecturer at Sheikhbahaee University University, Isfahan, Iran. His main research interests include critical and political discourse studies. He is currently working on his PhD thesis which is focused on investigating the discursive mechanisms of reproducing the discourse of Iranophobia in the US state political discourse. He previous papers have appeared in Discourse & Society, International Review of Pragmatics, CADDAD journal and domestic journals.

Hadaegh Rezaei holds PhD in General Linguistics from the University of Isfahan. He is a faculty member and associate professor at the Department of Linguistic at University of Isfahan. His main research interests include cognitive semantics and critical discourse analyses. He has published numerous academic articles on cognitive semantic, cognitive grammar and morpho-semantic issues on Persian in domestic and international journals as Language and Cognition, and Acta Linguistica.

Mohammad Amouzadeh is Full Professor of Linguistics at the University of Isfahan, Iran. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from Adelaide University and M.A in Applied Linguistics from Queensland University. His area of interests includes sociolinguistics, contrastive linguistics, Media communication, and Persian linguistics. His scholarly writings in English have appeared in various journals including Pragmatics, Lingua, Languages in Contrast, Language Sciences, International Journal of Cultural Studies, ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics.