Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The language of Islamic extremism
T2 - towards an automated identification of beliefs, motivations and justifications
AU - Prentice, Sheryl
AU - Rayson, Paul
AU - Taylor, Paul
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Recent studies have sought to understand individuals’ motivations for terrorism through terrorist material content. To date, these studies have not capitalised on automated language analysis techniques, particularly those of corpus linguistics. In this paper, we demonstrate how applying three corpus-linguistic techniques to extremist statements can provide insights into their ideology. Our data consisted of 250 statements (»500,000 words) promoting terrorist violence. Using the online software tool WMatrix, we submitted these data to frequency count, key word and key concept, and concordance analyses. Results showed that authors centre their rhetoric on themes of morality, social proof, inspiration and appeals to religion, and refer to the world via contrasting concepts, suggesting a polarised way of thinking compared to a general population usage. Additionally, we show how collocation can aid the establishment of networks between people and places. We discuss how such analyses might support the formulation of evidence based counter-terrorism strategies.
AB - Recent studies have sought to understand individuals’ motivations for terrorism through terrorist material content. To date, these studies have not capitalised on automated language analysis techniques, particularly those of corpus linguistics. In this paper, we demonstrate how applying three corpus-linguistic techniques to extremist statements can provide insights into their ideology. Our data consisted of 250 statements (»500,000 words) promoting terrorist violence. Using the online software tool WMatrix, we submitted these data to frequency count, key word and key concept, and concordance analyses. Results showed that authors centre their rhetoric on themes of morality, social proof, inspiration and appeals to religion, and refer to the world via contrasting concepts, suggesting a polarised way of thinking compared to a general population usage. Additionally, we show how collocation can aid the establishment of networks between people and places. We discuss how such analyses might support the formulation of evidence based counter-terrorism strategies.
KW - ideology
KW - terrorism
KW - rhetoric
KW - forensic research
U2 - 10.1075/ijcl.17.2.05pre
DO - 10.1075/ijcl.17.2.05pre
M3 - Journal article
VL - 17
SP - 259
EP - 286
JO - International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
JF - International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
SN - 1384-6655
IS - 2
ER -