The Role of (De)bonding in the Legitimation of Violence in Extremists' Public Threatening Communication

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1662949/v1

PDF

Research Article

The Role of (De)bonding in the Legitimation of Violence in Extremists' Public Threatening Communication

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1662949/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

Version 1

posted 18 May, 2022

You are reading this latest preprint version

One aspect of threat of terrorist public communication is incitement to violence and legitimating it (Tsesis, 2017). This paper contributes to understanding how bonds tabled in discourse are exploited to legitimize 'Our' violence and to delegitimize ‘outgroups’. I argue that the inciting texts drive the strategic use of bonds to achieve a main rhetorical function: legitimizing violence. The patterns of bonds, geared as a basis for perception and (de)legitimation, are investigated as realized in a set of incitement texts communicated publicly by the former al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and the far-rightist, Brenton Tarrant. The analytical approach mainly draws on Knight's (2010) social semiotic approach to bonding to identify the account of bonds as evidence of and entry points to (de)legitimation. The patterns of bonds across each terrorist's texts are then labelled thematically based on what is (de)legitimated. To identify reference to reasons of (de)legitimation, Van Leeuwen's (2007) semantic-functional strategies of critique and (de)legitimation are used. To map the rhetorical structure level-style of (de)legitimation, the classic appeal strategies – pathos (appeal to incitees' emotions), logos (rational arguments) and ethos (authority-based arguments) – are identified. Findings showed that both authors tended to deploy (i) communing bonds to legitimize 'Our' violence and (ii) condemning bonds to delegitimize outgroups (mainly, their actions, values, and membership), chiefly via moralization, rationalization and authorization, and by drawing on authors' ethos and logical reasoning.

Linguistics

affiliation

incitement

legitimization of violence

bonding

violent extremist discourse

ideological schema

forensic linguistics

To achieve their violent agendas, terrorists require a degree of ideological justification and exploitation of social bonds to legitimate their violent actions and mobilize support (Malešević, 2019). However, little is known about how terrorists utilize these bonds in discourse. Contributing to the growing international commitment to counterterrorism, recent research has been dedicated to empirically investigating the features of the language of terrorism as well as violent extremists’ language crimes (e.g. threats and incitement to terrorism), using a forensic linguistic lens (see e.g. Shuy, 2010; Etaywe & Zappavigna, 2021; Longhi, 2021). Forensic linguistic analyses – that is the "use of linguistic techniques to investigate crimes in which language data forms part of the evidence” (Crystal, 2008, p. 194) – has been found to be crucial for investigating terrorism cases and, particularly, identifying the violent agendas and schemas of writers and speakers (Shuy, 2020).

This paper, adopting a forensic linguistic lens, contributes to obtaining insights into the language of terrorism and the semiotic clues that are useful for prosecution and intelligence analysts in order for them to successfully investigate illegal intentions and their ideological underpinnings. Specifically, the paper explores how bonds tabled, or made available in discourse (Zappavigna, 2018), operate in terrorist incitement texts as an entry point to the legitimation of violence – as realized in the discourse of the two most lethal terrorist ideologies, the jihadist and the far-rightist (Global Terrorism Index, 2020). The paper applies forensic discourse analysis (see Coulthard, Johnson & Wright, 2017) and social semiotic tools to, first, illuminate how social bonds are construed and functioning in terrorist incitement texts and, second, ultimately contribute to forensic linguistic research into the role of evaluative language in articulating and identifying a terrorist’s “ideological schema” (e.g. Shuy, 2020, p. 446) and in legitimating harmful social actions. In this study, I argue that terrorist incitement texts drive the use of ingroup ‘good’ bonds versus outgroup ‘bad’ bonds to serve the legitimation of violence, based on the positive presentation of Self (i.e., the ingroup) and negative presentation of outgroups (e.g. Cap, 2017). The study forms part of a broader project that examines the language of extremism and both incitement and communicated threats as social semiotic practices by jihadist and far-right extremists.

The notion of legitimation, as a primary function of discourse, has extensively been studied in different contexts, such as media (Vaara & Tienari, 2008), business organisations (Erkama & Vaara, 2010), and parliamentary discourse on immigration (Rojo & Van Dijk, 1997). Legitimation in this paper is defined as: a social, discursive act of constructing the ‘why’ for the incited violence. This definition is informed by studies which stress the role of language in constructing answers to why 'we' did/should do something, why we should do it in 'X' way, and why an action should be considered reasonable or socially acceptable (Van Dijk, 1998; Van Leeuwen, 2007).

Within the context of social conflicts and opposing social groups, to describe who 'We' are and who 'They' are becomes a key criterion of membership and (de)legitimation (Van Dijk, 1998), that is the delegitimation of outgroups and their associated values and phenomena, and the legitimation of 'Our' violence. In such a context, legitimating 'Us' implies delegitimating outgroups via discursive acts that may "follow the categories of the ideological schema" of the ingroup and challenge the identity of the outgroups by delegitimating ‘Their’ membership, actions, goals, norms and values, social position, and access to 'Our' social resources (Van Dijk, 1998, pp. 258-259). These categories of ideological schema are adopted in this paper to enable description of what is being (de)legitimated to serve the legitimacy of violence.

To explore how these categories are (de)legitimated, this paper concerns itself with the associated evaluative textbites. Evaluative textbites (Etaywe, 2021) are the textual segments that serve to unveil a terrorist's bond-based reasoning for (de)legitimation. These textbites move us closer to the clues as to how violence is legitimated. This approach is aligned with, first, Du Bois' (2007) view that evaluation is the smallest social act in discourse, which co-occurs with positioning and (dis)alignment in the stance-taking acts. Second, it is aligned with Knight’s (2010, p. 45) theory that an "evaluative coupling" realizes the "minimal social unit" (i.e., bond) representing the shared values that construe a community-alignment. This paper adopts the evaluative coupling concept (Knight, 2010) to account for the association between what is evaluated, and the evaluation used for (de)legitimation. Following Knight (2010), an example of an attitude-ideation coupling (taken from the dataset) is a negative attitude (underlined) targeted at immigrants (in bold, added) in the following sentence: "Mass immigration…destroy(s) our communities". Following Knight, this ideation-attitude coupling can be said to table a bond which we might gloss as ‘immigrants are bad’, a bond that I argue can also serve to delegitimize immigrants’ behaviours realized in the judgmental lexical item ‘destroy’. In so doing, I follow Knight (2010) in drawing on the three regions of attitudinal meanings outlined by the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005):

judgement: assessments of behaviour.
appreciation: estimating the value of entities or processes.
affect: expressing emotional reactions and states.

Evaluative couplings, I argue, unveil the precise dynamics of (de)legitimation through linguistic resources. Nevertheless, a successful investigation into (de)legitimation includes exploring the “references to [e.g. moral or ideological] reasons and to courses of action that had or have to be taken because of contextual constraints, causes or opinions" (Van Dijk, 1998, p. 255). As such, this study maps the evaluative couplings, of ‘Our’ versus ‘Their’ ideational targets, and resources onto the various moral or ideological reasons or grounds of (de)legitimation.

Van Leeuwen's (2007, 2008) strategies of how discourse constructs critique and (de)legitimation of social practices provides a framework for examining these grounds. This framework includes, first, "moralization", which refers to legitimation by reference to specific value systems. Second, "rationalization" is concerned with legitimation by reference to goals of social actions. Third, "authorization" is involved in legitimation by reference to authority. Fourth, "mythopoesis" refers to legitimation that is conveyed through narratives whose outcomes reward or punish actions (for more details, see Van Leeuwen, 2007, p. 91).

Additionally, reference to grounds or modes of argumentation, namely logos (logical argument), ethos (the inciter's value-based credibility and reliability), and pathos (the appeal to the incitees' emotion), helps explore the style associated with appraisal at the rhetorical structure level (e.g., Johnstone, 2009) in relation to acts of (de)legitimation (Erkama & Vaara, 2010). Mapping these rhetorical modes can bring us closer to the rhetorical patterns of how a terrorist is attending to an ingroup's social and political "goals and beliefs" for persuasive purposes (e.g. Poggi, 2005, p. 297). Put differently, these rhetorical modes can sensitize us to how an inciter leads their incitees to pursue particular violent goals by persuading them that the proposed goals serve to preserve the ingroup's identity, welfare, and ideological and physical territories. This study adopts Poggi's (2005) argument that through the three modes of persuasion of logos, ethos and pathos, the inciter attempts to raise the value of the violent actions proposed and to strengthen the believability of the link between violence and the ingroup's interests. Poggi (2005, p. 300) uses the term "value coefficient" to refer to positive versus negative argument and cognitive computing regarding the usefulness of an action towards achieving a goal, where a positive or negative evaluation is a belief about whether some events, some people and their objects are useful means to some goal. That said, research into bonds remains limited and to which this study contributes, taking a bond as identity and value bases for enacting legitimation and enhancing the value coefficient of some violent actions.

This paper concerns itself with bonds realized by evaluative couplings (Knight, 2010). The aim is to provide a complementary perspective on (de)legitimation in terrorism. Building on Knight's (2010, p. 49) affiliation strategies, the bonds are taken as devices that serve to legitimate an ingroup through "communing" (that is, sharing positive, shareable bonds) and to delegitimate outgroups through "condemning" (that is, rejecting the negative, unshareable bonds). Using this approach, this style of (de)legitimation can be thought of as a form of bond-disposition – a tendency to provide collections of communing bonds that provide insights into the ‘good’ ingroup and condemning bonds that target the ‘bad’ outgroups.

2.1 Data

In this study, six written inciting texts by the jihadist Osama bin Laden over 2001–2006, and the inciting messages in the Great Replacement manifesto by the far rightist Brenton Tarrant were analyzed. Table 1 shows the title, topic and wordcount of each text. These texts were chosen to give a representation of the practice of legitimation in the context of incitement to violence by two terrorists coming from the most dangerous, transnational extremist ideologies. The English translations of OBL's texts were used as drawn from the CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service report, al-Bayanat jihadist Internet website and the Al-Jazeera news network online archive (see FBIS Report, 2004). The English-language Great Replacement manifesto, which contained both passages that can be interpreted as threat messages as well as passages of incitement to hatred and violence (Önnerfors, 2019), was made openly available on the Internet before Tarrant's attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 (see Tarrant, 2019).

Table 1

Overview of the dataset

2.2 Data analysis procedure

The discourse analysis procedure undertaken for qualitatively examining the dynamics of (de)legitimation focused on the utterances and texts segments where evaluative couplings were used. Consider the following evaluative textbite extracted from Tarrant's manifesto inciting the killing of immigrants: "…but what few know is that Rotherham is just one of an ongoing trend of rape and molestation perpetrated by these [immigrants]…". This example construes the 'immigrants are bad: rapists and molesters' bond to serve as a moral basis for inciting the killing of immigrants following incidents such as Rotherham scandal of organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, in 2010 but took local authorities long time to act against reported perpetrators. This bond is realized lexicogrammatically by a hyperbolic negative reference to immigrants' act of rape and molestation as "an ongoing trend,” which is the precise dynamic employed for delegitimation. The bonds were, then, categorized into communing-bonds, and condemning-bonds, which serve to construct 'Us' and 'Them' as opposing networks of values.

Following Van Dijk (1998), the thematic patterns of bonds were, then, tabulated into what is (de)legitimated. In the extract above, immigrants' 'action' is what is delegitimated. Afterwards, to explore the pattern of how (de)legitimation is enacted based on which grounds or references to reasons (see Section 1), the precise dynamics were tabulated under Van Leeuwen's (2007, 2008) four strategies of critique. In the same example, the dynamic of (de)legitimation is categorized under 'moral evaluation'. Finally, to explore the terrorists’ style at the rhetorical structure level, the bonds were mapped onto the modes of argumentation – logos, ethos and pathos – to explore the tendency of the inciter in attending to his incitees' goals and beliefs, whether via rational arguments, appealing to shared ethos, or appealing to incitees' emotions. Tarrant above constructs his ethos and presents himself as a credible person who knows what few know and an ethical character who is against rape and molestation. The top-bottom annotation, which I am proposing, of bond in the example is [ethos: delegitimation of action: moral evaluation]. This form of notation allows for capturing, first, the mode of argumentation that gears the (de)legitimating bonds, second, what is (de)legitimated, and, finally, based on which grounds or reference to reasons (de)legitimation is made (see also Erkama & Vaara, 2010).

3.1 Communing and condemning bonds as basis for (de)legitimation

The analysis below provides an account of key bond clusters realized in discourse as patterns of collocative values, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. That is, both OBL and Tarrant constructed a 'We'-centred cluster of communing bonds, where positive values collocated with 'Our' attitudinal targets, opposing a 'They'-centred cluster of condemning bonds, where negative values collocated with 'Their' attitudinal targets. This unfolding of values resulted in a prosodic structure that served to legitimate ‘Us’ and delegitimate ‘Them’, presenting the world as an opposing network of values.

OBL's network of bonds shows that his texts constructed the 'We/They' dichotomy within the victimization framework. OBL tended to construct the ‘We’ group as monotheist Muslims upholding the ‘tawhid’ creed, as in "O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims" (see Appendix A, A.1) and as victimized by the Americans, as in "Our sons are being killed” – see Appendix A, B.2. Put differently, while the 'We' group is coupled with positive judgement ("have believed", and "die…as Muslims") instantiating the 'good Muslims' bond, members of the ingroup are also coupled with positive judgement (normality) to construct them as innocent victims undergoing the oppression of outgroups. To delegitimize the outgroups, the Americans and their Israeli allies were constructed as non-believers or polytheists targeting Islam, and thus as victimizers, as in Example 1 below (Appendix A, A.3) where 'They' is coupled with negative judgement ("fight Islam") instantiating the 'bad America' bond. To end victimization, OBL presented democratic options as being unviable and misguiding and thus negatively appreciated (see Example 2 – Appendix A, B.1) while jihad is constructed as a reasonable duty (see Example 3 – Appendix A, B.4 – where jihad is coupled with positive appreciation invoking a positive judgement). Note that the evaluative expressions are underlined while the attitudinal targets are in bold.

Examples 1–3. Gloss of OBL's key bonds

Tarrant’s network of bonds demonstrates that he tended to construct outgroups such as Muslims, immigrants, pro-immigration leftists, NGOs and economic elites, and ‘anti-White’ concepts such as diversity and democracy as an opposing pole to White European Christians. Tarrant tended to position key bonds related to 'Us' (e.g., Whiteness, Europeanness, popularism and traditionalism) as shareable (see Example 4 – Appendix B, B.1) while the ‘bad’ bonds served to construct a threat of weakness, disaster, immorality or alternatively a "White genocide" brought by 'Others'. To win this struggle, Tarrant constructed radical actions as a 'must' by coupling 'we' with positive judgement instantiating the 'good destabilization' bond (see Example 5 – Appendix B, B.2).

Examples 4–5. Gloss of Tarrant's key bonds

OBL and Tarrant showed a binary bond disposition where ‘Their’-centred bonds served to delegitimize those who impede the formation and maintenance of 'Our' identity and power. The bonds tabled by Tarrant tended to presuppose superiority in race and imply maintaining power dominance, and which supports previous research into values underpinning rightist discourse.

3.2 Rhetorical patterns as to 'what' is (de)legitimated and 'how'

The deployment of evaluative couplings has provided support to previous research (e.g., van Leeuwen, 2007) about the role of interpersonal language in establishing and cultivating addressees' belief in the legitimacy of actions urged. This deployment revealed a pattern of a combination of simultaneous choices from the rhetorical modes, themes of (de)legitimation, and critique dynamics (see Fig. 3). These patterns are explained in the following subsections.

3.2.1 Rhetorical patterns in the OBL's texts

To legitimate Self, OBL focused on legitimating 'Our' 'good' actions by primarily relying on two persuasive modes, ethos and logos (see Table 2). To enhance the value coefficient (Poggi, 2005, p. 300) of the goal of ‘Our’ actions and thus beliefs in the usefulness of 'Our' action, OBL also challenged the identity of the outgroups chiefly by ethos- and logos-based delegitimation (i.e., negative evaluation) of ‘Their’:

Actions (i.e., 'They' have no right to engage in what they do or say),
Values (i.e., 'Their' social values and norms are not 'Ours'),
Goals (i.e., 'They' come aiming to take advantage of our physical territories and to discredit 'Us'),
Membership (i.e., 'They' do not belong to 'Our' ingroup), and
Social positions (i.e., 'They' are not 'real' or legitimate rulers).

Table 2

(De)legitimation themes and modes in the OBL texts

To demonstrate how legitimation of ‘Our’ action is established, consider Example 6 below – Appendix A, C. 1.Here, OBL appeals to the incitees’ pathos, such as the feelings of pride, happiness in altruism to fight in support of Islam, and the insecurity of Muslims, to legitimate jihad chiefly by reference to 'moral evaluation', that is specifically by glorifying jihad and mujahidin and their role towards defending Islam. In ethos-based legitimation of 'Our' actions, OBL also used mythopoesis as in: "I will narrate to you part of that great [Tora Bora] battle to show how cowardly they are on the one hand, and how effective the trenches are in draining them on the other hand” – Appendix A, A.2. In this example, OBL legitimizes trench warfare and incites the Iraqis to adopt it by reference to the positive outcome of the bravery of mujahidin and the cowardice (negative judgement) of the American troops in the positively appreciated Tora Bora battle in Afghanistan and by reference to the effectiveness (positive appreciation) of the trench-warfare technique used in that battle against the US-led forces.

Example 6

Gloss of OBL's logos-based act of legitimation of violence

In his ethos-based acts of delegitimation, OBL operated by reference to his values. Consider Example 7 (Appendix A, A.5) where OBL delegitimates the actions of countries supporting the US-led wars against Muslim countries via moral evaluation, specifically by viewing pro-Americans as being hypocrites, evildoers, falsehood followers, and pro-victimizers. In Example 8 (Appendix A, A.4), OBL also delegitimates the social position of Muslim rulers by moral evaluation, that is specifically by reference to these leaders as disgraceful to the Muslim ummah.

Examples 7–8. Gloss of OBL's ethos-based acts of delegitimation

In his logos-based acts of delegitimation, OBL deployed couplings that operate by persuading through logical argumentation. For instance, in Example 9 (Appendix A, B.3) the ‘goal’ of Muslim country-governments is delegitimated by 'rationalization'. This is specifically by reference to example governments as being “created to” or 'aimed at' annihilating jihad and weakening the Muslim ummah – as preceded by 'obviousness' marker of logical argument (It is no secret).

Example 9

Gloss of OBL's logos-based act of delegitimation of goals

3.2.2 Rhetorical patterns in Tarrant’s texts

Tarrant demonstrated comparable patterns of (de)legitimation to those of OBL. To legitimate Self, Tarrant focused on legitimating 'Our' actions. This legitimation was enhanced by challenging the identity of 'Others' by delegitimating 'Their' associated categories (see Table 3). Besides OBL's categories, Tarrant also delegitimated the outgroups’ access to social resources (e.g., lands, jobs, housing in major cities) as in: "These same [immigrants'] children will one day become teens […], taking our peoples lands, work, houses and even attacking and killing our children" (Appendix B, C.1). This delegitimating act emphasizes the far-rightists' concerns about outgroups' equality with White people in rights to these resources and urging for giving priority to welfare to Whites. Like OBL, however, Tarrant showed more tendency towards ethos-based and logos-based arguments.

Table 3

(De)legitimation themes and modes in the Tarrant texts

To demonstrate how 'Our' actions are legitimated, consider the logos-based act in Example 10 (Appendix B, B.3). Tarrant here incites for killing the children of immigrants to prevent the immigrants from staying in European lands and to protect the future of White children, presenting non-Whites as being a threat to Whites' survival and prosperity, and thus turning the incited action into an "emotional goal" (Poggi, 2005, p. 315). This is facilitated by 'rationalization', that is specifically by a rhetorical question in which the effects of leaving 'a nest of vipers' in one's backyard is compared with allowing immigrants' children to live in Europe.

Example 10

Gloss of Tarrant's logos-based act of legitimation of action

To enhance the incitees' belief in the legitimacy of the incited actions, Tarrant tended to delegitimate the outgroups' actions, values, and membership. See, for instance, Example 11 (Appendix B, C.2), where Tarrant delegitimates the immigrants' acts in an ethos-based act of 'moral evaluation', specifically by reference to immigrants as disenfranchisers and demolishers of White’s existential values as stressed by the anaphora 'destroy our…'. To delegitimate values such as multiculturalism, as in Example 12 (Appendix B, B.4), Tarrant deploys a logos-based delegitimation where he contrasts what he considers to be non-diverse nations' strength with diverse nations. Tarrant delegitimates via 'moral evaluation', specifically by reference to diversity as weakness.

Examples 11–12. Gloss of Tarrant's act of delegitimation

Example 10 above is also another example of logos-based delegitimation of Others' membership. For more examples on (de)legitimation acts, see Appendices A and B which show the (de)legitimation modes, themes, and grounds for critique in detail.

In sum, the similarities between the two terrorists in their rhetorical choices could be ascribed to their violent, ideological agendas in which each terrorist has sought to achieve social and political change by violent means. Commonalities could also be ascribed to their extreme ideological schemas. That is, each terrorist tended to think about the world and inter-group relationships by polar means, or alternatively by constantly negatively evaluating outgroups and positively evaluating their ingroup and its actions. These findings provide support to Shuy's (2020) argument that language, particularly here evaluative language, reveals a terrorist's ideological schemas. Besides, the three simultaneous choices in the act of (de)legitimation – the (de)legitimation mode, theme, and critique dynamic – suggest that while inter-group conflicts take the form of struggles over categories such as activities, resources and values, conflicts are inherently over group legitimacy. Additionally, the focus on bonds geared via ethos-based arguments served to enhance the credibility and reliability of the inciters, as well as the incitees’ belief that evaluations were coming from an ethical and competent character whose actions serve 'Our' values. These findings support previous research (e.g., Poggi, 2005) that competence is a main feature through which a persuader seeks to lead their audiences to attribute credibility to the persuader's assertions. In their logos-based acts of (de)legitimation, the two inciters also deployed couplings that serve persuasion of their incitees through showing consistency – alternatively "coherence" (Poggi, 2005, p. 313) – in the inciters’ beliefs and their congruence with the incitees' beliefs.

Based on the analyzed set of terrorist incitement texts, this paper has offered an exploration of how terrorists deploy bonds to lend legitimacy to their violence and how bond disposition can provide evidence of the acts of (de)legitimation. Legitimation has been found to be a function of terrorist inciting discourse where communing and condemning bonds serve legitimation and delegitimation, respectively. Within this good/bad dichotomous presentation of bonds, the inciters can present hostile acts as "reasonable" and can construct the inciter and incitees as cultural members who "share beliefs about what are good and bad [categories], as well as who is responsible for scenes, [thus] they can indict Others through description of situations” (Tracy, 2008, p. 176).

This research contributes to our understanding of how terrorists tend to gear bonds to legitimate violence. This deployment of bonds was demonstrated as being achieved by three simultaneous choices. The first is related to what is (de)legitimated. That is, the bonds are deployed to legitimize primarily 'Our' violent actions and to delegitimize outgroups by providing evaluation on any of the following themes of delegitimation: membership, actions, goals, norms and values, social position, and access to 'social resources. The second is that critique is provided by reference to reasons or to any ground of critique such as moralization and rationalization. The third is drawing on any mode of argumentation, that is whether logos, ethos or pathos, to "strengthen the [incitees'] believability of the link between" (Poggi, 2005, p. 297) the incited action and the incitees’ various goals, such as defending some ideological or physical values. Condemning bonds as well as communing bonds were found to be crucial entry points to the negotiation of inter-group relationship and useful clues of how a violent extremist tends to construct and enhance a belief about whether particular actions are a useful means to some collective goal. Put differently, (de)bonding serves the way an extremist can build affiliation and opposing coalitions of communities of opposing values to ultimately serve justification of violence against outgroups.

The analytical strategy of the practice of (de)legitimation in this paper has the potential to aid in threat assessment by sensitizing threat assessors to the kind of linguistic clues of extremist ideological schemas and extremists' practice of legitimation of their violent agendas. The analytical strategy also provides a useful theoretical framework for future studies on (de)legitimation in different contexts. This multi-level analysis provides forensic linguists with a semantics-based approach to examining violent extremist discourse and the ideological underpinnings behind incitement to hatred and violence, and to better detect terrorists' topics, schemas, and strategies used in incitement crimes. The analytical strategy adopted in this study provides support to Coulthard, Johnson and Wright's (2017) argument that forensic discourse analysis is valuable for examining how texts are shaped by ideologies and relations of power and how texts may influence addressees' beliefs and social relations. This multi-level analysis should, therefore, be extended to examining (de)legitimation in other discourses.

Competing interests: The author declares no competing interests.

Cap, P. (2017). The language of fear: Communicating fear in public discourse. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Coulthard, M., Johnson, A. & Wright, D. (2017). An introduction to forensic linguistics: Language in evidence. London: Routledge.

Crystal, D. (2008). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (6^th ed). USA: Blackwell Publishing.

Du Bois, J. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Erkama, N. & Vaara, E. (2010). Struggles over legitimacy in global organizational restructuring: A rhetorical perspective on legitimation strategies and dynamics in a shutdown case. Organization Studies, 31(07), 813–839.

Etaywe, A. (2021, September 6)-. Evaluative textbites as evidence of discourse functions of terrorist communicated threats: When 'care' is a moral foundation [Conference presentation]. 3^rd International Language and Law Association Focus Conference on Forensic Linguistics: Language as Evidence. https://illaconferences2021.ua.es/en/focus-conference

Etaywe, A. & Zappavigna, M. (2021). Identity, ideology, and threatening communication: An investigation of patterns of attitude in terrorist discourse. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 10(2), 75–110. doi:10.1075/jlac.00058.eta.

FBIS Report. (2006). Compilation of Usama bin Laden statements 1994-January 2004. https://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-fbis-bin-laden-statments-1994-2004.pdf

Johnstone, B. (2009). Stance, style, and the linguistic individual. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 29–52). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knight, N. (2010). Wrinkling Complexity: Concepts of identity and affiliation in humour. In M. Bednarek & J. Martin (Eds.), New Discourse on Language: Functional Perspectives on Multimodality, Identity, and Affiliation (pp. 35–58). London: Continuum.

Longhi, J. (2021). Using digital humanities and linguistics to help with terrorism investigations. Forensic Science International, 318 (2021) 110564. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2020.110564

Malešević, S. (2019). Cultural and anthropological approaches to the study of Terrorism. In E. Chenoweth, R. English, A. Gofas & S. Kalyvas (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism (pp. 177–193). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martin, J. & White, P. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Önnerfors, A. (2019). 'The Great Replacementʼ - Decoding the Christchurch terrorist manifesto. Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.20760.83208

Poggi, I. (2005). The goals of persuasion. Pragmatics and Cognition, 13(2), 297–336. doi:10.1075/pc.13.2.04pog

Prideaux, G. (2011). Linguistic contributions to the analysis of hate language. International Journal of Law, Language and Discourse, 1 (1), 27–52.

Rojo, L. & Van Dijk, T. (1997). There was a problem, and it was solved!: Legitimating the expulsion of “illegal” migrants in Spanish parliamentary discourse. Discourse & Society, 8(4), 523–566.

Shuy, R. (2010). Linguistics and terrorism cases. In M. Coulthard & A. Johnson (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (pp. 558-575). London: Routledge.

Shuy, R. (2020). Terrorism and forensic linguistics: Linguistics in terrorism cases. In M. Coulthard, A. May & R. Sousa-Silva (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (pp. 445–462). Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

Tarrant, B. (2019). The great replacement manifesto. https://web.archive.org/web/20190315144811/https://observer.news/featured/the-manifesto-of-brenton-tarrant-a-right-wing-terrorist-on-a-crusade

Tracy, K. (2008). “Reasonable Hostility”: Situation-appropriate Face-attack. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 169–191. doi:10.1515/JPLR.2008.009

Tsesis, A. (2017). Terrorist incitement on the Internet. Fordham Law Review, 68(2), 367–377.

Vaara, E. & Tienari, J. (2008). A discursive perspective on legitimation strategies in MNCs’. Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 985–993.

Van Dijk, T. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London/ California/ New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Legitimation in discourse and communication. Discourse and Communication, 1(1), 91–112. doi:10.1177/1750481307071986.

Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice: New tools for critical analysis. London: Oxford University Press.

Zappavigna, M. (2018). Searchable talk: Hashtags and social media metadiscourse. UK & USA: Bloomsbury Academic.

Examples 1-12 are available in the Supplementary Files section.

Tables 1-3 are available in the Supplementary Files section.

Appendix C is not available with this version.

Appendix.docx
floatimage1.jpeg
Table 1 Overview of the dataset
floatimage7.jpeg
Table 2 (De)legitimation themes and modes in the OBL texts
floatimage11.jpeg
Table 3 (De)legitimation themes and modes in the Tarrant texts
floatimage4.png
Examples 1-3. Gloss of OBL's key bonds
floatimage5.png
Examples 4-5. Gloss of Tarrant's key bonds
floatimage8.png
Example 6. Gloss of OBL's logos-based act of legitimation of violence
floatimage9.png
Examples 7-8. Gloss of OBL's ethos-based acts of delegitimation
Onlinefloatimage10.png
Example 9. Gloss of OBL's logos-based act of delegitimation of goals
Onlinefloatimage12.png
Example 10. Gloss of Tarrant's logos-based act of legitimation of action
Onlinefloatimage13.png
Examples 11-12. Gloss of Tarrant's act of delegitimation

PDF

Version 1

posted 18 May, 2022

You are reading this latest preprint version

The Role of (De)bonding in the Legitimation of Violence in Extremists' Public Threatening Communication

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Figures

1. Introduction And Literature Review

2. Methodology

2.2 Data analysis procedure

3. Findings And Discussion

3.1 Communing and condemning bonds as basis for (de)legitimation

3.2 Rhetorical patterns as to 'what' is (de)legitimated and 'how'

3.2.1 Rhetorical patterns in the OBL's texts

3.2.2 Rhetorical patterns in Tarrant’s texts

4. Conclusion

Declarations

References

Examples 1-12

Tables 1-3

Appendix C

Supplementary Files

Status:

Version 1