ABSTRACT
System justification theory (SJT) explores the psychological and ideological motives of those supporting social and political structures of inequality. Given that SJT is generally explored through a framework that emphasises motivated social cognition, there is comparatively limited emphasis on the discursive and rhetorical dimension of system justification. We demonstrate how system justification is enacted in discourse by using a discursive-rhetorical psychological framework to analyse UK Parliamentary debates discussing ‘Brexit’—the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. The discursive-rhetorical psychological perspective locates system justification within argumentative settings in which politicians present themselves as democratic preservers of the status quo to defend or undermine contrasting Brexit positions. Speakers construct different versions of the status quo, indicating that the existing state of affairs is not an object with a predetermined definition. Our findings suggest that system justification in discourse should be explored in terms of how people actively defend or oppose systems themselves.