Chapter published in:
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 25–48

Chapter 2
A corpus-driven exploration of conspiracy theorising as a discourse type

Lexical indicators of argumentative patterning

| University of Milan

This chapter takes a view of conspiracy theorising as a discourse type and seeks to identify candidate linguistic features of such discourse in a corpus of books devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Adopting a corpus-driven approach, the study identifies three discursive traits which appear prominent in conspiracy discourse. The first trait concerns a high incidence of metadiscursive references to terms such as report, version and story, which are associated with negatively evaluative verbs (for example, claim) when premodified by the adjective official, and tend to co-occur with verbs such as emerge when referring to conspiracy theorists’ preferred versions. The second regards the frequent recourse to terms such as evidence (lack of which characterizes official stories) and facts (typically posited to be at the heart of conspiratorial versions). Finally, the study identifies the salience of hypothetical structures, signalled by the recurrent use of the modal would, which question official accounts using a modus tollens form of confutational argumentation.

Keywords: conspiracy theorising, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, lexical indicators, argumentative patterning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction, aim and scope of research
  • 2.Corpus and method
  • 3.The 911CT corpus: Preliminary insights from corpus analysis
    • 3.1Delving deeper into the data: Qualitative investigation
      • 3.1.1Official accounts, stories and versions
      • 3.1.2Contested epistemologies: Hard (or no) evidence, and obvious facts
      • 3.1.3“Surely if a plane is ‘vaporized’ then the occupants would be vaporized too?”: Refutational argumentation and modus tollens
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.02cat
References
Aupers, Stef
2020 “Decoding Mass Media/encoding Conspiracy Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 469–482. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baden, Christian, and Tzlil Sharon
2021 “BLINDED BY THE LIES? Toward an Integrated Definition of Conspiracy Theories.” Communication Theory 31 (1): 82–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michael Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak
2008 “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butter, Michael, and Peter Knight
(eds) 2020a The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2020b “Conspiracy Theory in Historical, Cultural and Literary Studies.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 28–42. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Byford, Jovan
2011 Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deschrijver, Cedric
2021 “On the Metapragmatics of ‘Conspiracy Theory’: Scepticism and Epistemological Debates in Online Conspiracy Comments.” Journal of Pragmatics 182: 310–321 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gabrielatos, Costas, and Alison Duguid
2014 “Corpus Linguistics and CDA: A Critical Look at Synergy”. CDA20+ Symposium, University of Amsterdam, 9 September 2014.
Giachanou, Anastasia, Bilal Ghanem, and Paolo Rosso
2021 “Detection of Conspiracy Propagators Using Psycho-linguistic Characteristics.” Journal of Information Science. January 2021 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giry, Julien, and Pranvera Tika
2020 “Conspiracy Theories in Political Science and Political Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 108–120. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gualda Caballero, Estrella
2020 “Social Network Analysis, Social Big Data and Conspiracy Theories.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 135–147. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel, and Erik Stei
2011 “How Quotation Marks what People do with Words.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (10): 2650–2663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard
1964 “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, available at https://​harpers​.org​/archive​/1964​/11​/the​-paranoid​-style​-in​-american​-politics/
Keeley, Brian L.
1999 “Of Conspiracy Theories.” The Journal of Philosophy 96 (3): 109–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel
2014 “The Sketch Engine: Ten Years on.” Lexicography 1: 7–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Olivier and Kenzo Nera
2020 “Social Psychology of Conspiracy Theories.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 121–134. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kou, Yubo, Xinning Gui, Yunan Chen, and Kathleen H. Pine
2017 “Conspiracy Talk on Social Media: Collective Sensemaking during a Public Health Crisis.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 1, CSCW, Article 61 (November 2017), DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leone, Massimo, Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel
2020 “Semiotic Approaches to Conspiracy Theories.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 43–55. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
1992 [1979] “Activity Types and Language.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 66–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Madisson, Mari-Liis, and Andreas Ventsel
2021 Strategic Conspiracy Narratives. A Semiotic Approach. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McKenzie-McHarg, Andrew
2020 “Conceptual History and Conspiracy Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theory, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 16–27. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miskimmon, Alister, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle
(eds) 2017 Introduction. In Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, ed. by Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin and Laura Roselle, 1–22. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oswald, Steve
2016 “Conspiracy and Bias: Argumentative Features and Fersuasiveness of Conspiracy Theories.” OSSA Conference Archive. 168. https://​scholar​.uwindsor​.ca​/ossaarchive​/OSSA11​/papersandcommentaries​/168
Pipes, Daniel
1998 Conspiracy: The Power of the Paranoid Style in History. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Predelli, Stefano
2003 “Scare Quotes and their Relation to Other Semantic Issues.” Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robins, Robert S., and Jerrold M. Post
1997 Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Samory, Mattia, and Tanushree Mitra
2018 “The Government Spies Using Our Webcams: The Language of Conspiracy Theories in Online Discussions.” Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 152 (November 2018), DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sarangi, Srikant
2000 “ATs, DTs and Interactional Hybridity: The Case of Genetic Counselling.” In Discourse and Social Life, ed. by Srikant Sarangi and Malcolm Coulthard, 1–27. Longman: Harlow.Google Scholar
Southwell, Brian G., Emily A. Thorson, and Laura Sheble
(eds.) 2018 Misinformation and Mass Audiences, Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R., and Adrian Vermeule
2009 “Symposium on Conspiracy Theories. Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (2): 202–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tangherlini, Timothy R., Shadi Shahsavari, Behnam Shahbazi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, and Vwani Roychowdhury
2020 “An Automated Pipeline for the Discovery of Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theory Narrative Frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and Storytelling on the Web.” PLoS ONE 15 (6): e0233879. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, Michael J.
2018 “Propagating and Debunking Conspiracy Theories on Twitter During the 2015–2016 Zika Virus Outbreak.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking 21 (8): 485–490. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, Michael J., and Karen M. Douglas
2013 “What about Building 7? A Social Psychological Study of Online Discussion of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” Frontiers in Psychology 4: 1–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar