Gesture and legitimation in the anti-immigration discourse of Nigel Farage

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) increasingly recognises the role played by multiple semiotic modes in discursive construction of social identities and inequalities. One embodied mode that has not been subject to any systematic within CDA is gesture. An area where gesture extensively studied, it shown bear significant load multimodal utterances, cognitive linguistics. Here, we use insights from linguistics provide a detailed qualitative gestures specific context – anti-immigration Nigel Farage. We describe accompany range rhetorical tropes typical discourses critically analyse their role, alongside speech, communicating prejudice legitimating discriminatory action. Our suggests an important part political which worthy further investigation future research.