How do violent jihadists use language to try to persuade people to carry
out violent acts? This book analyses over two million words of texts
produced by violent jihadists to identify and examine the linguistic
strategies employed. Taking a mixed methods approach, the authors
combine quantitative methods from corpus linguistics, which allows the
identification of frequent words and phrases, alongside close reading of
texts via discourse analysis. The analysis compares language use across
three sets of texts: those which advocate violence, those which take a
hostile but non-violent standpoint, and those which take a moderate
perspective, identifying the different uses of language associated with
different stages of radicalization. The book also discusses how
strategies including use of Arabic, romanisation, formal English,
quotation, metaphor, dehumanisation and collectivisation are used to
create in- and out-groups and justify violence.