Cover not available
Article published In:
Hate speech: Definitions, interpretations and practices
Edited by Fabienne H. Baider, Sharon Millar and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics and Society 11:2] 2020
► pp. 291–314

“They cowardly attack US, so we nobly eliminate them…”

The emergence of the translocal group in the propaganda of the Islamic State

 | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
ORCID logo | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
The threat of the Islamic State is realised both in its attacks and its discourse. To illustrate the role of linguistic threats, the present study investigates the ISIS online propaganda magazine Dabiq by combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics (Romero-Trillo 2008; Baker et al. 2008). Following the two groups described by van Dijk (2003), which are represented by the in-group (ISIS) and the out-group (against ISIS), we propose a third element: the translocal group (i.e., the people in between). The results show the substantial presence of linguistic strategies enhanced by Dangerous Speech (Benesch 2013) to create a high segregation between the groups. Also, the analysis shows the inextricable relationship between conflict and dangerous language and the need to investigate this link further, with special reference to the polarisation of the groups and to the subsequent escalation of violence in discourse.
Keywords: conflict, translocal group, Dangerous Speech, ISIS, Dabiq, propaganda
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Geopolitical context
    • 2.2Theoretical background
  • 3.Methodology and data description
  • 4.Analysis and results
    • 4.1Analysis of the categories
    • 4.2ISIS’ positive self-representation vs. negative other-representation
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18072.may
References (43)
References
Ahmed, Akbar. 2015. “Why are European Muslims Joining ISIS?” Huffington Post. [URL]
Awan, Imran. 2017. “Cyber-extremism: Isis and the Power of Social Media”. Social Science and Public Policy 541: 138–149.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyzanowski, 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 and Society 19 (3): 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bass, Loretta. 2014. “What Motivates European Youth to Join ISIS?” Syria Comment. [URL]
Bhatia, Aditi. 2009. “The Discourses of Terrorism.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (2): 279–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benesch, Susan. 2013. Dangerous Speech: A Proposal to Prevent Group Violence. The Dangerous Speech Project. [URL]
Benesch, Susan, Cathy Buerger, Toni Glavinic, and Sean Manion. 2018. Dangerous Speech: A Practical Guide. The Dangerous Speech Project. [URL]
Cap, Piotr. 2013. Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cockburn, Patrick. 2015. The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. London/New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Council of Europe. 2018. “Hate Speech: Freedom of Expression.” Report. [URL]
Cronick, Karen. 2002. “The Discourse of President George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden: A Rhetorical Analysis and Hermeneutic Interpretation”. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3 (3): 1–18.Google Scholar
Gambhir, Harleen. 2014. “Dabiq: the strategic messaging of the Islamic State”. Institute for the Study of War. [URL]
Georges, Amaryllis Maria. 2016. “ISIS Rhetoric for the Creation of the Ummah.” In Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies, ed. by Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo, Omondi Oketch, and Asiru Hameed Tunde, 178–198. Hershey, Penn.: IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gelber, Katherine. 2018. Why ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate preachers’ are distinct phenomena. The London School of Economics and Political Science. [URL]
Giro, Mario. 2015. Noi Terroristi: Storie vere dal nordafrica a Charlie Hebdo (We the terrorists: real stories from North Africa to Charlie Hebdo). Milan: Angelo Guerini SpA.Google Scholar
Graham, John. 2015. “Who Joins ISIS and Why?” The Huffington Post. [URL]
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1976. “Anti-languages”. American Anthropologist 78 (3): 570–584. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanoush, Feras. 2016. “Why Dabiq?” Atlantic Council. [URL]
Ingram, Haroro J. 2016. “An analysis of Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine.” Australian Journal of Political Science 51(3): 458–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Steven, M. Lynne Murphy, Carita Paradis, and Caroline Willners. 2012. Antonyms in English: Construals, Constructions and Canonicity. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan and Jesús Romero-Trillo (eds). 2013. Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Makri, Zakaria. 2005. Le Tajwîd, règles de la lecture coranique (The Tajwîd, rules for Koranic reading). Lyon: Tawahid.Google Scholar
Martín-Arroyo, Javier. 2017. El Cordobés, la voz del ISIS que se marchó a Siria con su madre malagueña (The Cordovan: the voice of ISIS who left for Syria with his mother from Málaga). El País. [URL]
Oddo, John. 2011. “War Legitimation Discourse: Representing ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in four US Presidential Addresses.” Discourse & Society 22 (3): 287–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oktar, Lütfiye. 2001. “The Ideological Organization of Representational Processes in the Presentation of Us and Them.” Discourse & Society 12 (3): 314–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orpin, Debbie. 2005. “Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10 (1): 37–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paul, David. 2015. “Is ISIS a Religious Group? Of course it is.” The Huffington Post. [URL]
Rodicio, Ángela. 2016. Las Novias de la Yihad (The Girlfriends of the Jihad). Barcelona: Espasa Libros S.L.U.Google Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús (ed). 2008. Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “The Identity Narratives.” In The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Reducing Identity Conflicts and Preventing Mass Murder, ed. by Mark Anstey, Paul Meerts, and I. William Zartman, 72–84. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, and Safa Attia. 2016. “Framing the Ideological Outcomes of the Tunisian Revolution through the Eyes of the Arab and Western Media.” Łódź Papers in Pragmatics 121: 177–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, and Caroline Cheshire. 2014. “The Construction and Disarticulation of National Identities through Language vis-à-vis the Scottish Referendum of Independence.” Łódź Papers in Pragmatics 10 (1): 41–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salazar, Philippe-Joseph. 2017. Words are Weapons: Inside ISIS’s Rhetoric of Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sanchez, Ray, Time Lister, Mark Bixler, Sean O’Key, Michael Hogenmiller, and Mohammed Tawfeeq. 2018. “ISIS Goes Global: 143 Attacks in 29 Countries have Killed nearly 2043 People.” CNN. [URL]
Torresi, Guillermina, and Quico Sallés. 2017. “Moussa Oukabir Sería el Autor Material del Atentado” (“Moussa Oukabir. The Alleged Perpetrator of the Terrorist Attack”). La Vanguardia. [URL]
van Dijk, Teun A. 2003. “Ideology and Discourse: A Multidisciplinary Introduction.” Unpublished manuscript, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.Google Scholar
2006a. “Discourse and Manipulation.” Discourse and Society 17 (2): 359–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006b. “Ideology and Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (2): 115–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vegani, Matteo, and Ana-Maria Bliuc. 2015. “The Evolution of the ISIS’ Language: A Quantitative Analysis of the Language of the First Year of Dabiq Magazine.” Sicurezza, Terrorismo e Società 21: 7–20.Google Scholar
Votel, Joseph L., Christina Bembenek, Charles Hnas, Jeffery Mouton, and Amanda Spencer. 2017. “Virtual Caliphate: Defeating ISIL on the Physical Battlefield is not Enough.” Center for a New American Security. [URL]
Wignell, Peter, Sabine Tan, Kay L. O’Halloran, and Rebecca Lange. 2017. “A Mixed Methods Empirical Examination of Changes in Emphasis and Style in the Extremist Magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah .” Perspectives on Terrorism 11(2): 2–20.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2001. “The Discourse-historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer. 63–94. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wright, Robin, J. M. Berger, William Braniff, Cole Bunzel, Daniel Byman, Jennifer Cafarella, Harleen Gambhir, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Hassan Hassan, Charles Lister, William McCants, Garrett Nada, Jacob Olidort, Alexander Thruston, Clinton Watts, Frederic Wehrey, Craig Whitesid, Graeme Wood, Aaron Y. Zelin, and Katherine Zimmerman. 2017. “The Jihadi Threat: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Beyond.” United States Institute of Peace report. [URL]
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Bartley, Leanne
2022. “They fabricated lies against us and described us in the harshest of ways”. Pragmatics and Society 13:3 ► pp. 431 ff. DOI logo
Mooney, Tara & Gareth Price
2022. Utopia, war, and justice. Journal of Language and Politics 21:5 ► pp. 675 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 september 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.