Delegitimizing Large Carnivore Conservation through Discourse

The legitimacy of large carnivore institutions to exercise truth-making power is assumed by constituents and other audiences. This study examines the power of language in shaping resistance to hegemonic truths about red wolf recovery in North Carolina. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of seven corpora produced by a discourse coalition comprising local, state, and federal actors. We demonstrate that these actors held seven cognitive interpretive repertoires in common (positioning; causality; contrariety; fatalist; falsifiability; victim; and big bad wolf). Findings indicate that repertoires influenced red wolf governance processes, reversed the risk narrative concerning recovery, split cognitive authority over red wolves in the public sphere, and set new, paradoxical limits for scientific inquiry. This study reinforces that language is power and, therefore, language is also legitimation. We conclude that researchers, citizens, and decision makers must attend to the ways in which language control contributes to legitimacy deficits through coordinated resistance.