This paper examines how the jihadist terrorist groups Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State discursively construct ‘the West’ as an alien, aberrant ‘other’ in their respective online propaganda magazines Inspire and Dabiq over a 5 year period (2010–2015). The analysis integrates insights from the field of Terrorism Studies into a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies approach, working centrally with the notions of othering and conventionalised impoliteness. Our findings reveal not only that othering is a key discursive process in the groups’ online propaganda machinery but that it is discursively realised via homogenisation, suppression (stereotyping) and pejoration strategies. The latter are further examined via the notion of conventional impoliteness. Pointed criticism emerges as the most frequent conventionalised impoliteness strategy in both magazines. Threats, condescension and exclusion strategies are also saliently used, albeit with different relative frequencies within each magazine. The findings show the value of Discourse Analysis to research into (jihadist) terrorism, including the possibility of drawing upon its findings to develop tailored counter-messages to those advanced by (jihadist) terrorist groups.
Baker, Paul, Ruth Wodak, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michal Kryzanowski, and Tony McEnery
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.
Baker, Paul
Ed.2015 “Special issue of Discourse and Communication on Corpus Based Approaches to the Study of Media Language.” Discourse and Communication 9 (2).
Baumann, Zigmund
1991Intimations of Post-Modernity. London: Routledge.
2015The ISIS Twitter Census. The Brookings Project on US Relations with the Islamic World (Analysis Paper no. 20), March 2015 ([URL] – last accessed 18th September 2017)
Blommaert, Jan, and Jeff Verschueren
1998Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance. London: Routledge.
2004Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies. New York: The Penguin Press.
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage
2002The News Interview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Colas, Brandon
2017 “What Does Dabiq Do? ISIS Hermeneutics and Organizational Fractures within Dabiq Magazine.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 401: 173–190.
Chertoff, Michael
2008 “The Ideology of Terrorism: Radicalisation Revisited.” Brown Journal of World Affairs 15(1): 11–20.
Coupland, Nikolas
2010 “ ‘Other’ Representation”. In Society and Language Use, edited by Jürgen Jaspers, Jan-Ola Őstman and Jef Verschueren, 242–260. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Coupland, Nikolas, and Justine Coupland
1999 “Ageing, Ageism and Anti-ageism: Moral Stance in Geriatric Medical Discourse.” In Language and Communication in Old Age: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Heidi Hamilton, 177–208. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.
2011Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Droogan, Julian, and Shane Peattie
2016 “Reading Jihad: Mapping the Shifting Themes of Inspire Magazine.” Terrorism and Political Violence. < >
Duffy, Margaret E.
2003 “Web of Hate: a Fantasy Theme Analysis of Rhetorical Vision of Hate Groups Online.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 27 (3): 291–312.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus and Patricia Bou-Franch
2013 “Relational Work in Anonymous, Asynchronous Communication: A Study of (Dis)Affiliation on YouTube”. In Linguistic Aspects of Intercultural Pragmatics, edited by Itsvan Kecskes and Jesus Romero Trillo, 343–356, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Goffman, Erving
1967Interactional Rituals. Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Portland, USA: Pantheon.
Halverson, Jeffry, H. L. Goodall Jr., and Steven R. Corman
2011Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Habeck, Mary
2006Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror. Yale: Yale University Press.
Holbrook, Donald
2012 “Al-Qaeda’s Response to the Arab Spring.” Perspectives on Terrorism 6 (6): 4–21.
Hyland, Ken
2000Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman.
Ingram, Haroro J.
2014 “Three Traits of the Islamic State’s Information Warfare.” The RUSI Journal 159 (6): 4–11.
Ingram, Haroro J.
2015a “The Strategic Logic of Islam State Information Operations.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 69 (6): 729–752.
Ingram, Haroro J.
2015b “An Analysis of the Taliban in Khurasan’s Azan (issues 1–5).” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 38 (7): 560–579.
Ingram, Haroro J.
2016 “An Analysis of Islamic State’s Dabiq Magazine.” Australian Journal of Political Science 511: 458–477.
Kaplan, Jeffrey, and Christopher P. Costa
2015 “The Islamic State and the New Tribalism.” Terrorism and Political Violence 27 (5): 926–969. .
Karim, Karim H.
1997 “The Historical Resilience of Primary Stereotypes: Core Images of the Muslim Other.” In The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, edited by Stephen Harold Riggins, 153–183. London: Sage.
Katz, Rita
2014 “The State Department’s Twitter War with ISIS Is Embarrassing.” Time Magazine16September 2014 [URL] (last accessed 18th September 2017).
Kirke, Xander
2015 “Violence and Political Myth: Radicalizing Believers in the Pages of Inspire Magazine.” International Political Sociology 91: 283–298.
Lemieux, Anthony F., Jarret M. Brachman, Jason Levitt, and Jay Wood
2014 “Inspire Magazine: A Critical Analysis of its Significance and Potential Impact through the Lens of the Information, Motivation, and Behaviour Skills Model.” Terrorism and Political Violence 261: 354–371.
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Anina Kinzel and Luke Walker
2017 “The Role of Discourse Analysis in Terrorism Studies.” In Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response, edited by Maura Conway, Lee Jarvis, Orla Lehane, Stuart Macdonald and Lella Nouri, 158–169. The Hague: iOS Press.
Macdonald, Stuart
2016 “Terrorist Narratives & Communicative Devices: Findings from a Study of Online Terrorist Magazines.” In Expanding Research on Countering Violence Extremism, edited by Sara Zeiger, 127–142, Abu Dhabi: Hedayah.
Macdonald, Stuart
2017 “Radicalisers as Regulators: An Examination of Dabiq Magazine.” In Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response, edited by Maura Conway, Lee Jarvis, Orla Lehane, Stuart Macdonald and Lella Nouri, 146–157, The Hague: iOS Press.
Macdonald, Stuart, Nyasha Maravanyika, David Nezri, Elliot Parry and Kate Thomas
forthcoming). “Online Jihadist Magazines and the ‘Religious Terrorism’ Thesis.” Critical Studies on Terrorism.
Macdonald, Stuart, and Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria
under review) Visual Jihad: Constructing the “Good Muslim” in Online Jihadist Magazines.
Mair, David
2017 “#Westgate: A Case Study. How al-Shabaab Used Twitter during an Ongoing Attack.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 401: 24–43.
March, James. G.
1994A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. New York: Free Press.
Martínez-Cabeza, Miguel
2009 “Dangerous Words: Threats, Perlocutions and Strategic Actions.” In Cognitive Approaches to Language and Linguistic Data, edited by Wieslaw Olesky and Piotr Stalmaszcyk, 269–284. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Matusitz, Jonathan, and James Olufowote
2016 “Visual Motifs in Islamist Terrorism: Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory.” Journal of Applied Security Research 111: 18–32.
Novenario, Celine Marie I.
2016 “Differentiating Al Qaeda and the Islamic State through Strategies Publicized in Jihadist Magazines,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 39 (11): 953–967.
Partington, Alan
2009 “Evaluating Evaluation and some Concluding Reflections on CADS.” In Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies on the Iraq Conflict, edited by John Morley and Paul Bayley, 261–304, London: Routledge.
2001Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London and New York: Routledge.
Rickford, John R.
1999 “The Ebonics Controversy in my Back Yard: A Sociolinguist’s Experiences and Reflections.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(2): 267–275.
Said, Edward W.
1997Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how We See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage.
Said, Edward W.
2003Orientalism. London: Penguin.
Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne Marie
2008 “Those are only Slogans: A Linguistic Analysis of Argumentation in Debates with Extremist Political Speakers.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 27 (4): 345–358.
Sims, Christopher
2012 “Occidentalism at War: Al-Qaida’s Resistance Rhetoric.” Altre Modernità: Saggi 8 (11): 206–220.
Sivek, Susan C.
2013 “Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’s Digital Magazine Inspire in the Self-Radicalization Process.” International Journal of Communication 71: 584–606.
Stern, Jessica, and J. M. Berger
2015ISIS: The State of Terror. London: William Collins.
Stout, Mark E.
2009 “In Search of Salafi Jihadist Strategic Thought: Mining the Words of the Terrorists.” Studies in Conflict Terrorism 32 (10): 876–892.
Talbot, Mary
2000 “ ‘It’s Good to Talk’: The Undermining of Feminism in a British Telecom Advertisement.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 2 (2): 233–258.
Tedeshi, James, and Richard Felson
1994Violence, Aggression and Coercive Actions. Washington DC: America Psychological Association.
Testa, Alberto, and Gary Armstrong
2009 “Words and Actions: Italian Ultras and Neo-fascism.” Social Identities 14 (4): 473–490.
van Dijk, Teun A.
1998Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage Publications.
van Dijk, Teun A.
1999 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” In The Discourse Reader, edited by Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland, 443–463. London: Routledge.
Weimann, Gunnar J.
2017 “In Search for those who Loose and Bind: Al-Qaeda between the Arab Revolutions and the Islamic State’s Caliphate.” In Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response, edited by Maura Conway, Lee Jarvis, Orla Lehane, Stuart Macdonald and Lella Nouri, The Hague: iOS Press.
2017Media Jihad: The Islamic State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare. London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.
Zeiger, Sara
2016Undermining Violent Extremist Narrative in South East Asia: A How-To Guide, Abu Dhabi: Hedayah.
Cited by
Cited by 7 other publications
Alkhayer, Talip
2021. Fragmentation and Grievances as Fuel for Violent Extremism: The Case of Abu Musa’ab Al-Zarqawi. Social Sciences 10:10 ► pp. 375 ff.
De Bruyn, Phillip Conrad
2022. Differentiating terrorist groups: a novel approach to leverage their online communication. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 17:2 ► pp. 180 ff.
Giménez García, Roser & Sheila Queralt
2023. Pragmatic linguistic analysis of the videos by terrorists of the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 96 ► pp. 287 ff.
Giménez García, Roser & Sheila Queralt
2024. Grounds for Exemption from Criminal Liability? How Forensic Linguistics Can Contribute to Terrorism Trials. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 37:2 ► pp. 623 ff.
Lakomy, Miron
2021. Mapping the online presence and activities of the Islamic State’s unofficial propaganda cell: Ahlut-Tawhid Publications. Security Journal 34:2 ► pp. 358 ff.
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Lella Nouri
2021. The discourse of the US alt-right online – a case study of the Traditionalist Worker Party blog. Critical Discourse Studies 18:4 ► pp. 410 ff.
Macdonald, Stuart, Nyasha Maravanyika, David Nezri, Elliot Parry & Kate Thomas
2018. Online jihadist magazines and the “religious terrorism” thesis. Critical Studies on Terrorism 11:3 ► pp. 537 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.