The Language of Violent Jihad

How do violent jihadists use language to try to persuade people to carry out violent acts?

Paul Baker (Author), Rachelle Vessey (Author), Tony McEnery (Author)

9781108421119, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 October 2021

300 pages, 40 b/w illus. 52 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

How do violent jihadists use language to try to persuade people to carry out violent acts? This book analyses over two million words of texts produced by violent jihadists to identify and examine the linguistic strategies employed. Taking a mixed methods approach, the authors combine quantitative methods from corpus linguistics, which allows the identification of frequent words and phrases, alongside close reading of texts via discourse analysis. The analysis compares language use across three sets of texts: those which advocate violence, those which take a hostile but non-violent standpoint, and those which take a moderate perspective, identifying the different uses of language associated with different stages of radicalization. The book also discusses how strategies including use of Arabic, romanisation, formal English, quotation, metaphor, dehumanisation and collectivisation are used to create in- and out-groups and justify violence.

1. Introduction
2. Terrorism and Language
3. Collecting and Analysing Extremist Texts
4. The In-Group
5. The Out-group
6. The Path of Jihad
7. Linguistic Strategies
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Terrorism, armed struggle [JPWL], Islamic studies [JFSR2], Violence in society [JFFE], Linguistics [CF]