The role of social affiliation in incitement: A social semiotic approach to far-right terrorists’ incitement to violence

One key aspect of threat in terrorists’ language is incitement to violence. Contributing to a fuller understanding of how terrorists use language to encourage people to join their cause, this article examines the role of evaluative language in incitement strategies used by a far-rightist to align wi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLanguage in society Vol. 53; no. 4; pp. 623 - 648
Main Authors Etaywe, Awni, Zappavigna, Michele
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.09.2024
Subjects
Alienation
Attachment
Communion
Conspiracy
Discourse
Discourse analysis
Electronic publishing
Extremism
Forensic linguistics
Hate crimes
Hate speech
Hostility
Incitement
Language
Language usage
Linguistics
Membership
Morality
Mosques
Right wing politics
Semiotics
Social function
Social groups
Social values
Sociolinguistics
Strategies
Systemic functional linguistics
Terrorism
Terrorists
Threats
Values
Violence
Netherlands
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ISSN0047-4045
1469-8013
DOI10.1017/S0047404523000404

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Summary:One key aspect of threat in terrorists’ language is incitement to violence. Contributing to a fuller understanding of how terrorists use language to encourage people to join their cause, this article examines the role of evaluative language in incitement strategies used by a far-rightist to align with and alienate particular social groups. The Affiliation framework (Knight 2010a; Zappavigna 2011; Etaywe & Zappavigna 2021; Etaywe 2022a), as grounded in systemic functional linguistics, is used to understand how values and social bonds are leveraged in the process of incitement, as explored in a manifesto published online by Brenton Tarrant, preceding his 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand. The findings reveal two main affiliation strategies used for incitement: communion (forging solidarity and alignments) and alienation. These strategies function to construct opposing social groups in discourse, with the condemned groups positioned as a threat, hostility legitimated as morally reasonable, and violence as warranted. (Far-right extremism, incitement, hate crimes, affiliation, morality of terrorism, forensic linguistics, conspiracy theory discourse)
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ISSN:0047-4045
1469-8013
DOI:10.1017/S0047404523000404