Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 6:1 (2018) ► pp.79–106

Othering the West in the online Jihadist propaganda magazines Inspire and Dabiq

| Swansea University, UK
| Swansea University, UK

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.

Keywords: Jihad, online propaganda magazines, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Inspire, Dabiq , conventionalised impoliteness, othering
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The information operations architecture of Jihadist terrorist groups – a focus on the online propaganda magazines Dabiq and Inspire
  • 3.Othering: From social processes to textual realisations
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Corpus
    • 4.2Framework
    • 4.3Procedure
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1The West: An othered group in Dabiq and Inspire
    • 5.2Othering ‘the West’ in Dabiq and Inspire
      • 5.2.1Homogenising ‘the West’
      • 5.2.2Silencing and suppressing ‘the West’
      • 5.2.3Pejoration
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00004.lor
References
Baker, Paul
2010 “Representations of Islam in British Broadsheet and Tabloid Newspapers 1999–2005.” Journal of Language and Politics 9 (2): 310–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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).Google Scholar
Baumann, Zigmund
1991 Intimations of Post-Modernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Becker, Annette
2007 “Between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Two Interviews with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in the Run-up to the Iraq War.” In Discourse, War and Terrorism, edited by Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep, 161–183. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berger, J. M., and Jonathon Morgan
2015  The 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
1998 Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bowden, Zachary A.
2008 “Poriadk & Bardak (Order and Chaos): The Neo-fascist Project of Articulating a Russian ‘People’.” Journal of Language and Politics 7 (2): 231–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Braniff, Bill, and Assaf Moghadam
2011 “Towards Global Jihadism: Al-Qaeda’s Strategic, Ideological and Structural Adaptations since 9/11.” Perspectives on Terrorism 5 (2): 36–44.Google Scholar
Brindle, Andrew, and Corrie MacMillan
2017 “Like & Share if You Agree: A Study of Discourses and Cyber-Activism of the Far-Right British Nationalist Party Britain First.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5 (1):108–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit
2004 Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies. New York: The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage
2002 The News Interview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colas, Brandon
2017 “What Does Dabiq Do? ISIS Hermeneutics and Organizational Fractures within Dabiq Magazine.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 401: 173–190. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chertoff, Michael
2008 “The Ideology of Terrorism: Radicalisation Revisited.” Brown Journal of World Affairs 15(1): 11–20.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, Paul Iganski, and Abe Sweiry
2017 “Linguistic Impoliteness and Religiously Aggravated Hate Crime in England and Wales.” Journal of Language, Aggression and Conflict 5 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Droogan, Julian, and Shane Peattie
2016 “Reading Jihad: Mapping the Shifting Themes of Inspire Magazine.” Terrorism and Political Violence. < DOI logo>Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1967 Interactional Rituals. Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Portland, USA: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Halverson, Jeffry, H. L. Goodall Jr., and Steven R. Corman
2011 Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Habeck, Mary
2006 Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror. Yale: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Holbrook, Donald
2012 “Al-Qaeda’s Response to the Arab Spring.” Perspectives on Terrorism 6 (6): 4–21.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken
2000 Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ingram, Haroro J.
2014 “Three Traits of the Islamic State’s Information Warfare.” The RUSI Journal 159 (6): 4–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015a “The Strategic Logic of Islam State Information Operations.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 69 (6): 729–752. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b “An Analysis of the Taliban in Khurasan’s Azan (issues 1–5).” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 38 (7): 560–579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “An Analysis of Islamic State’s Dabiq Magazine.” Australian Journal of Political Science 511: 458–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Jeffrey, and Christopher P. Costa
2015 “The Islamic State and the New Tribalism.” Terrorism and Political Violence 27 (5): 926–969. DOI logo.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Katz, Rita
2014 “The State Department’s Twitter War with ISIS Is Embarrassing.” Time Magazine 16 September 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kleinke, Sonja, and Birte Bös
2015 “Intergroup Rudeness and the Metapragmatics of its Negotiation in Online Discussion Fora.” Pragmatics 25 (1): 47–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lazar, Annita, and Michelle M. Lazar
2007 “Enforcing Justice, Justifying Force: America’s Justification of Violence in the New World Order.” In Discourse, War and Terrorism, edited by Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep, 45–66, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Stuart, Nyasha Maravanyika, David Nezri, Elliot Parry and Kate Thomas
forthcoming). “Online Jihadist Magazines and the ‘Religious Terrorism’ Thesis.” Critical Studies on Terrorism. DOI logo
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
March, James. G.
1994 A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Matusitz, Jonathan, and James Olufowote
2016 “Visual Motifs in Islamist Terrorism: Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory.” Journal of Applied Security Research 111: 18–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Prentice, Sheryl, Paul Rayson, and Paul Taylor
2012 “The Language of Islamic Extremism: Towards an Automated Identification of Beliefs, Motivations and Justifications.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17 (2): 259–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak
2001 Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R.
1999 “The Ebonics Controversy in my Back Yard: A Sociolinguist’s Experiences and Reflections.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(2): 267–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward W.
1997 Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine how We See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
2003 Orientalism. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sims, Christopher
2012 “Occidentalism at War: Al-Qaida’s Resistance Rhetoric.” Altre Modernità: Saggi 8 (11): 206–220.Google Scholar
Sivek, Susan C.
2013 “Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’s Digital Magazine Inspire in the Self-Radicalization Process.” International Journal of Communication 71: 584–606.Google Scholar
Stern, Jessica, and J. M. Berger
2015 ISIS: The State of Terror. London: William Collins.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talbot, Mary
2000 “ ‘It’s Good to Talk’: The Undermining of Feminism in a British Telecom Advertisement.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 2 (2): 233–258.Google Scholar
Tedeshi, James, and Richard Felson
1994 Violence, Aggression and Coercive Actions. Washington DC: America Psychological Association. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Testa, Alberto, and Gary Armstrong
2009 “Words and Actions: Italian Ultras and Neo-fascism.” Social Identities 14 (4): 473–490. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A.
1998 Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
1999 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” In The Discourse Reader, edited by Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland, 443–463. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Winter, Charlie
2015 The Virtual ‘Caliphate’: Understanding Islamic State’s Propaganda Strategy. London: Quilliam Foundation.Google Scholar
2017 Media Jihad: The Islamic State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare. London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.Google Scholar
Zeiger, Sara
2016 Undermining Violent Extremist Narrative in South East Asia: A How-To Guide, Abu Dhabi: Hedayah.Google Scholar
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 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.