This study investigates how legislators utilise proximisation strategies to construct ideological worldviews in Nigerian Senate debates about democratic consolidation and the legitimacy of the legislature. For data, samples were purposively drawn from a 1.9 million-word corpus of Nigerian Senate debates constructed for a broader research and subjected to qualitative discourse analysis. The analysis reveals that legislators’ discursive acts prompt the conceptual organisation of the discourse space such that the activities of the executive are construed to be inimical to democratic consolidation and the legitimacy of the legislature, whereas legislators construe themselves positively as resilient defenders of democracy and the legislative institution. Through proximisation strategies, legislators engage in the ideological discourse of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation relative to the executive. This paper contributes to our understanding of the tenuous and polarised relationship amongst arms of government under a presidential political system in an emerging democracy.

中文翻译：

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“立法机关是民主的引擎室”：在尼日利亚参议院辩论中通过接近战略构建意识形态世界观

本研究调查了在尼日利亚参议院关于民主巩固和立法机构合法性的辩论中，立法者如何利用接近策略来构建意识形态世界观。对于数据，样本是有目的地从 190 万字的尼日利亚参议院辩论语料库中抽取的，该语料库是为更广泛的研究而构建的，并进行定性话语分析。分析表明，立法者的话语行为促进了话语空间的概念组织，以至于行政部门的活动被解释为不利于民主巩固和立法机关的合法性，而立法者则积极地将自己解释为民主和民主的有弹性的捍卫者。立法机构。通过邻近策略，立法者参与与行政相关的积极自我呈现和消极他人呈现的意识形态话语。本文有助于我们理解在新兴民主国家总统政治体制下政府部门之间脆弱和两极分化的关系。