Legitimation in The Giving Pledge: Constituting a Rhetoric of Wealth

Written Communication Jul 2025

Legitimation in The Giving Pledge: Constituting a Rhetoric of Wealth

Karen Gulbrandsen University of Massachusetts Dartmouth ; Christopher Eisenhart University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Abstract

In the United States, the 2010s saw a significant, organized wave of public philanthropy among the very wealthy. We conducted a discourse analysis of legitimation in The Giving Pledge, a philanthropic endeavor that began in 2010 in which billionaires encourage each other to publicly pledge to give away the majority of their wealth in their life or upon their death. We approach these texts with the questions, “Why do these individuals make these public pledges?” and “What rhetorical work is being done by them?” From the perspective of legitimation theory, how do these public, rhetorical acts constitute the social and economic orders into which they are made? Our discourse analysis of the pledges finds that they constitute two parts of an economic system of wealth, both wealth acquisition and the philanthropic giving of wealth. These constitutions in The Giving Pledge reify an institutional order by appending a promise to give back.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 2025-07-01
DOI: 10.1177/07410883251328318
Open Access: Closed
Topics: discourse analysis

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Cites in this index (3)

Pollak (2021)

Legitimation and Textual Evidence: How the Snowden Leaks Reshaped the ACLU’s On…

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Cramer et al. (2014)

Examining Readers’ Evaluations of Objectivity and Bias in News Discourse

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Oddo (2013)

Discourse-Based Methods Across Texts and Semiotic Modes

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