Abstract

Political persuasion in contemporary contexts is increasingly shaped by polarization, crisis communication, and digitally mediated discourse, highlighting the need to understand better the linguistic mechanisms through which legitimacy is constructed. This study provides a critical review of theoretical and empirical developments on interpersonal metadiscourse in political discourse from 2005 to 2025. Drawing on Hyland’s model of stance and engagement, the review examines how interpersonal metadiscourse intersects with classical rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), socio-cognitive models of persuasion, and critical discourse approaches to ideology and power. The analysis reveals that existing research remains theoretically fragmented, geographically skewed toward Western democratic contexts, and limited in its treatment of crisis and authoritarian discourse. In response, the study proposes an integrated framework in which interpersonal metadiscourse functions as a mediating layer that linguistically realizes rhetorical appeals within broader ideological and power structures, ultimately contributing to the construction of persuasive legitimacy. By bridging micro-level linguistic analysis with macro-level theories of persuasion and ideology, the study offers a more comprehensive conceptual model and identifies directions for future research, particularly in cross-cultural, multimodal, and AI-mediated political communication.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.