Arguing Counterterrorism: New perspectives

This book offers a multifaceted, analytical account of counterterrorism argumentative speech. The existing works in this field are thematically, chronologically and methodologically limited, taking a selective focus on issues, actors and methods and focusing mainly on counterterrorism speech after 9/11 from the USA. It comes, however, as no surprise that there was counterterrorism speech before 9/11, nor that it occurred within and outside the Western world, involving various themes with various purposes, different kinds of argumentative structures and various types of cultural sources, rhetorical and linguistic means. This book addresses that gap in the literature, by approaching counterterrorism speech from different temporal, political and cultural perspectives, from within and from without, its dynamics with other types of speech and the role of other actors than the state. Furthermore, it takes a systematic look at how it is constructed, and at the cultural and linguistic instruments used. The work therefore tackles the following themes: first, a historical and comparative overview of counterterrorism speech: its emergence and changes over time, counterterrorism cultures in different parts of the world, the changing nature of threats, the effect of specific watershed events and trends. Second, the phenomenology of counterterrorism speech, namely: its nature, purpose, implications and ways of instrumentalisation, interaction and dynamics, the constitutive, supportive or indeed challenging role of other actors apart from the government: the media, the public, the opposition. The third theme is the anatomy of counterterrorism speech, namely its political, cultural and linguistic constitutive elements. Approached here are, on the one side, the script and cultural resources, and on the other rhetoric and linguistic tools the latter also with a view to creating a catalogue of methods for the analysis of such texts. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, discourse analysis, security studeis and IR.