An Overview of Research on Discursive Legitimation

Discourse plays an important role in the construction of legitimation. Numerous studies of discursive legitimation have been completed. However, few studies have reviewed relevant literature with a visual pattern, and a review that analyzes its trends is urgent. The study presents an analytical literature review of the research on discursive legitimation, aiming to provide an overview of and insights into a selected bibliography of 91 research articles on discursive legitimation. A bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace is applied to quantitatively and visually analyze relevant studies, followed by a close qualitative analysis to capture different classifications of legitimation strategies, main research methods, and hot topics.