This is an excerpt from Critical Terrorism Studies: A Dictionary by Lee Jarvis and Alice Martini. Available in all good book stores, and via free download from E-International Relations
Discourse
The concept of discourse has two different, but related, meanings within the social sciences. Broad conceptions of the term – associated with social theorists like Ernesto Laclau (see Critchley and Marchart 2024) – approach discourse as meaningful social structures that contain material things and our ideas about them. Education, for instance, would count as a discourse in this understanding, as would the Cold War or the war on terror. Narrower understandings of discourse – associated with the field of linguistics – tend to use the term as a synonym or near-synonym for written or spoken language or related symbolic systems. To continue our above examples, discourse here might refer to the speech of a teacher in a classroom, or the words of political leaders in the post-1945 rivalry between the US and Soviet Union.
Much critical terrorism studies work deals explicitly with the concept of discourse, often with special attention to the deconstruction of dominant or hegemonic constructions of terrorism (Holland 2016). One review article, however, found that work published in the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism tended to draw far more frequently on a narrower understanding of discourse as spoken and written language than the thicker understanding of discourse as a meaningful social structure (Herring and Stokes 2011). This may result from the desire within CTS to challenge representations of ‘terrorism’ in the language of political elites and powerful actors such as media corporations.
There are many examples of CTS work on discourse, many of which take explicit or implicit inspiration from Jackson’s (2005) unpacking of the language used within the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror. By focusing on political discourse in countries such as Morocco (Bartolucci 2010), Nigeria (Chukwuma 2022), and Turkey (Barrinha 2011), such work presents opportunity for comparative analysis with more frequently explored case studies such as the UK and the US. Research in this area often grapples with themes such as the construction of political identities – like the ‘terrorist’ – in spoken and written language, productions of current risk and future threat, and the explanation and justification of political actions such as counterterrorism campaigns and their consequences.
CTS work also, importantly, encourages analysis of how terrorism and counterterrorism are constructed in sites far away from the discourse of political elites. In so doing, it shows us how seemingly ‘everyday’ texts such as school textbooks (e.g. Ford 2019), film and television productions (e.g. Brereton and Culloty 2012), and videogames (e.g. Young 2015) contribute to contemporary understandings of terrorism. This may have important implications for the ways in which ‘ordinary’ people make sense of the violences of non-state and state actors, shaping ‘everyday’ or ‘banal’ engagements with global politics. Such work speaks to associated scholarship on ‘vernacular’ constructions of security threats such as ‘terrorism’ (e.g. Jarvis and Lister 2013b) which argues that the discourse of ‘ordinary’ citizens may be important for investigating how elite language resonates amongst publics, as well as for identifying resistance or opposition to official discourse (Vaughan-Williams and Stevens 2016).
For Michel Foucault, discourse refers to a system of knowledge, practices, and representations through which meaning is produced and power is exercised. Discourses do not simply reflect reality—they construct it by determining what can be said, thought, and known within a particular historical and social context. For Foucault, discourse is productive: it creates subjects, legitimises authority, and shapes the conditions of possibility for how phenomena such as ‘madness’, ‘sexuality’, ‘punishment’, or ‘terrorism’ are understood. Discourses are tied to power/knowledge relations: they are not neutral or objective, but are deeply embedded in institutional and political structures. Through discourse, regimes of truth are established — whereby certain forms of knowledge become accepted while others are silenced or marginalised. This attentiveness to questions of power is one of the reasons that this approach to discourse has become widely used in critical terrorism research.
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis refers to a broad and diverse set of methodologies and methods for studying the use of language in politics. Approaches to discourse analysis differ in their theoretical understandings of how language works, and in the tools they use to approach its study. Critical terrorism researchers frequently employ Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) or Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) in their work. Where the former seeks to grasp the relationship between language and social action, the latter emphasises the productive and relational workings of power within discourse (Dixit and Stump 2016; Stump and Dixit 2013).
Pioneered by scholars including Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, and Teun van Dijk, CDA examines how language is political and constructs reality in specific ways linked to the exercise of power. Fairclough emphasised the dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures, arguing that language both shapes and is shaped by societal contexts. Discourse, in this sense, is not merely a way of describing reality, but a form of social practice that can influence perceptions, norms, and power dynamics. Social actors are not passive recipients of discourse, but active participants who engage with, reproduce, or challenge dominant representations of the world. CDA therefore highlights the agency that individuals and groups have in negotiating meaning and contesting power structures, approaching language as a tool of power but also as resistance and change.
This focus on the interplay between language, power, and social action makes CDA a valuable tool for critical terrorism studies (CTS), enabling scholars to analyse how terrorism is discursively constructed, how specific actors are labelled as threats, and how representations shape policy and public perception, legitimising political actions such as, for example, the war on terror (Jackson 2005).
Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, FDA is used to grasp how discourses or dispositifs – which shape and are shaped by power – produce and regulate meaning, construct identities, and sustain power relations within specific historical and social contexts (Foucault 1980). For Foucault, discourse is not merely a way of representing the world, but a system of practices that organises knowledge and governs social life. FDA examines these formations to uncover the rules, assumptions, and exclusions that define what can be said, thought, or done within a given field of knowledge. As detailed in the entries on discourses and dispositif, FDA can be used to deconstruct dominant security discourses, challenge taken-for-granted definitions of terrorism, and uncover how discourses legitimise state practices, shape public perception, and marginalise dissident voices.
Discourse analysis has been a prominent methodological focus and tool of CTS research. This emphasis has been queried by some for its marginalisation of potentially important – non-discursive – dynamics within the politics of terrorism and counterterrorism (Joseph 2011). Another point of contention has been around the role actors have in shaping and resisting dominant discourses. While some contend that discourses envelop everything and thus diminish the possibility of actors’ agency (Hülsse and Spencer 2008), other scholars argue that subjects of (counter-)terrorism discourses have some agency to accept, reject or resist power (Jackson 2005).
Further reading
Onursal, Recep, and Daniel Kirkpatrick. 2019. “Is Extremism the ‘New’ Terrorism? The Convergence of ‘Extremism’ and ‘Terrorism’ in British Parliamentary Discourse”. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(5): 1094-1116.
Shepherd, Laura J. 2006. “Veiled References: Constructions of Gender in the Bush Administration Discourse on the Attacks on Afghanistan Post-9/11”. International Feminist Journal of Politics 8 (1): 19–41.
Baker-Beall, Christopher. 2014. “The Evolution of the European Union’s ‘Fight against Terrorism’ Discourse: Constructing the Terrorist ‘Other’”. Cooperation and Conflict 49 (2): 212–238.
Bartolucci, Valentina. 2010. “Analysing Elite Discourse on Terrorism and Its Implications: The Case of Morocco”. Critical Studies on Terrorism 3 (1): 119– 135.