Pérez-Paredes, Pascual and McEnery, Tony (2024) Representing “Muslims” in Jihadist Magazines : An Analysis of the NUTCRACKER Corpus Topics. In: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Discourses of Extremism :. Routledge Research in Language and Communication . Routledge, London, pp. 170-191. ISBN 9781032600680
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Jihadist magazines are vehicles for extreme propaganda, radicalisation processes, and recruitment methods used by Islamic terrorist organisations. Research has extensively analysed communication strategies used in these magazines, but not much attention has been paid to how language is used to incite violence in them. This research examines jihadist texts in NUTCRACKER, a corpus of approximately 1,250,000 words covering six different jihadist magazines, including Azan and Dabiq, published between 2009 and 2017. Our methodology is informed by representation theory, keyword analysis and collocation; and our findings show the key multiword lexical items used to present five topics in the corpus that articulate jihadist discourse: (1) The conflict over the legitimate representation of the Islamic faith; (2) violence and the legitimisation of violence; (3) the use of formulaic and polite expressions; (4) citing sources of authority; and (5) the geopolitics of jihad. We argue that jihadist magazines contribute to the violent jihad master narrative by constructing reality through nomination strategies where Muslims are reduced to instruments and facilitators of jihad and related concepts.