Representing “terrorism”

The radicalisation of the May 2013 Woolwich attack in British press reportage

Matthew Evans

Simone Schuller

This paper uses critical stylistics to analyse the British press’s use of the term “terrorism” in their reporting of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby outside the military barracks in Woolwich, London on 22nd May 2013. It considers academic definitions of “terrorism” and compares these to the use of the term in newspaper reports on the attack. The authors seek to understand how the Woolwich attack is fit into a complex and contested concept such as terrorism. A close reading of a small corpus of national newspaper articles was used to identify common themes in the way the incident is portrayed, with critical stylistic analysis being applied to investigate how the term “terrorism” is used in context. The study highlights how the application of the “terrorism” label is justified within the articles despite the scarcity of information regarding the attack and persons involved at the time of their publication.

Keywords: terrorism, media, Woolwich, critical stylistics, newspaper corpora

Published online: 02 October 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.3.1.06eva

References

Baker, Paul, Andrew Hardie, and Tony McEnery

2009 A Glossary of Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Edwards, Geraint O

2012 “A Comparative Discourse Analysis of the Construction of ‘In-groups’ in the 2005 and 2010 Manifestos of the British National Party.” Discourse & Society 23(3):245–258.

Fairclough, Norman

1989 Language and Power. London: Longman.

Fowler, Roger

1986 Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1991 Language in the News London: Routledge.

Greenwald, Glenn

2013 “Was the London Killing of a British Soldier ‘Terrorism’?” <Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-terrorism-blowback [Accessed 4 March 2014]

Hoffman, Bruce

2006 Inside Terrorism. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Jeffries, Lesley

2010 Critical Stylistics: The Power of English. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

L’Hote, Emilie

2010 “New Labour and Globalization: Globalist Discourse with a Twist?” Discourse & Society 21(4):355–376.

Muslim Council of Britain

2013 “Muslims Condemn Attack on Soldier in Woolwich” <Available at http://www.mcb.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2333 [Accessed 4 March 2014]

Novotny, Daniel D

2007 “What is Terrorism?” In Focus on Terrorism (Volume 81), edited by Edward V. Linden, 23–32. Hauppauge: Nova Science Publishers.

Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak

2001 Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.

Richardson, John E

2007 Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rodin, David

2004 “Terrorism without Intention.” Ethics 1141:752–771.

USC United States Code, 22 USC § 2656f

“Annual Country Reports on Terrorism” <Available via Cornell University Legal Information Institute at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2656f [Accessed 4 March 2014]

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Baker, Paul & Tony McEnery

2019. In Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists, ► pp. 215 ff.

Janicki, Karol

2017. What is conflict? What is aggression? Are these challenging questions?. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5:1 ► pp. 156 ff.

Tabbert, Ulrike

2016. In Language and Crime, ► pp. 27 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 april 2022. 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.