TY - JOUR
T1 - The three faces of securitization
T2 - Political agency, audience and context
AU - Braspenning, Thierry
PY - 2005/6
Y1 - 2005/6
N2 - The prime claim of the theory of securitization is that the articulation of security produces a specific threatening state of affairs. Within this theory, power is derived from the use of 'appropriate' words in conformity with established rules governing speech acts. I argue, however, that a speech act view of security does not provide adequate grounding upon which to examine security practices in 'real situations'. For instance, many security utterances counter the 'rule of sincerity' and, the intrinsic power attributed to 'security' overlooks the objective context in which security agents are situated. As a corrective, I put forward three basic assumptions - (i) that an effective securitization is audience-centered; (ii) that securitization is context-dependent; (iii) that an effective securitization is power-laden. The insights gleaned from the investigation of these assumptions are progressively integrated into the pragmatic act of security, the value of which is to provide researchers in the field with a tractable number of variables to investigate in order to gain a better understanding of the linguistic manufacture of threats.
AB - The prime claim of the theory of securitization is that the articulation of security produces a specific threatening state of affairs. Within this theory, power is derived from the use of 'appropriate' words in conformity with established rules governing speech acts. I argue, however, that a speech act view of security does not provide adequate grounding upon which to examine security practices in 'real situations'. For instance, many security utterances counter the 'rule of sincerity' and, the intrinsic power attributed to 'security' overlooks the objective context in which security agents are situated. As a corrective, I put forward three basic assumptions - (i) that an effective securitization is audience-centered; (ii) that securitization is context-dependent; (iii) that an effective securitization is power-laden. The insights gleaned from the investigation of these assumptions are progressively integrated into the pragmatic act of security, the value of which is to provide researchers in the field with a tractable number of variables to investigate in order to gain a better understanding of the linguistic manufacture of threats.
KW - Agency
KW - Audience
KW - Context
KW - Discourse
KW - Pragmatic act
KW - Securitization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=20744450463&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1354066105052960
DO - 10.1177/1354066105052960
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:20744450463
SN - 1354-0661
VL - 11
SP - 171
EP - 201
JO - European Journal of International Relations
JF - European Journal of International Relations
IS - 2
ER -