I study how language produces and legitimizes power in the public sphere. My work examines how discourse produces the meanings that give ideologies their shape and force. This includes tracing the discursive processes that make particular power relations appear natural and credible. To address these questions, I integrate social, cognitive, and quantitative methods.

My current projects examine how contemporary state and diplomatic rhetoric constructs ideological alignment and legitimizes particular visions of social and political order. This work extends arguments in my book My book Discourses of Ideology: Social Media and the Iranian Election Protests (Routledge, 2018), in which I trace how social movement ideologies and identities are reembedded across media platforms. Grounded in a sociocognitive approach to critical discourse analysis, it examines written and visual texts to show the ways that actors position themselves and become positioned, discursively and symbolically, within a dynamic ideological field.