Article published In:
Australian Review of Applied LinguisticsVol. 30:2 (2007) ► pp.19.1–19.18
Doing battle with a noun
Notes on the grammar of ‘terror’
Jonathan Crichton | Research Centre for Languages and Cultures Education, School of International Studies, University of South Australia
Studies from a range of disciplinary perspectives have highlighted how the public rhetoric of the Bush administration has shaped the representation of the conflict which has followed 9/11. However, the literature in this area raises but does not itself address the question of how the administration’s use of ‘terror’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist(s)’ contributes to this representation. This paper addresses the question by providing a preliminary analysis of how these terms participate in the grammar of twelve of George W. Bush’s speeches since 9/11. Drawing on Systemic Functional Grammar, the analysis suggests that ‘terror’ has become interchangeable with ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist(s)’, resulting in the personification of ‘terror’ as an abstract agent. The implications of this construction are explored in relation to the literature on the rhetoric associated with the ‘war on terror’.
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Cited by
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Herring, Eric & Doug Stokes
2011. Critical realism and historical materialism as resources for critical terrorism studies. Critical Studies on Terrorism 4:1 ► pp. 5 ff. 
Wilson, John
2015. Political Discourse. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 775 ff.
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