Proximization: The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing: 232

The book makes an outstanding theoretic entry into the space of legitimization discourse through an enriched concept of proximization. Its skillful crafting of the constituents of STA and its clinical finesse in the demonstration of spatial, temporal and axiological proximizations in the US terrorist discourse and beyond bear a testimony to Cap’s consistently dexterous pursuit of proximization and legitimization, putting a stamp of professional authority on the text. It is therefore commended to all applied linguists, political scientists, psychologists, diplomats and sociologists who seek an exploration into the strategic management of threatening antagonism and legitimization of political, diplomatic and military action. — Akin Odebunmi, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in Discourse Studies Vol. 19.3 (2017), pp. 373-374

Piotr Cap’s book is a remarkable synthesis of strands of thought that have been emerging in linguistics and discourse analysis over the past decade or so. In the basic elements of our thought and language we are spatial creatures. Cap draws on work in Cognitive Linguistics that has shown the fundamental importance of spatial awareness and takes us into a territory that is of immediate concern in the globalised era where borders and distance dissolve and are re-imagined. His achievement is to develop a theoretical framework that reveals the many ways in which the imagining of closeness and remoteness can be manipulated in the political sphere and bound up with fear, security and conflict. This is a book that spans and combines the cognitive with the pragmatic, the theoretical and the practical. His theory demonstrates how the principle of metaphor transports our spatial experience of the near and the far into the mental dimensions of time, history, values and ideologies. Not only does it present proximization theory in more detail and with clarity than ever, it demonstrates how the theory can be applied to one of the dominant discourses of our age, that of anti-terrorism and anti-migration. In its final chapter the book points the way to further explorations in the space of public discourse, in particular those discourses dealing with the urgent issues of the environment, technology and health.
We have here a dynamic model and methodology to expand our critical understanding of the ever changing space we build for ourselves and in which we live. — Paul Chilton, Lancaster University