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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

Awni Etaywe Open the ORCID record for Awni Etaywe [Opens in a new window]  and
Michele Zappavigna
Awni Etaywe*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Australia
Michele Zappavigna
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Awni Etaywe School of Arts and Media University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052, Australia [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

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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Language in Society , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , September 2024 , pp. 623 - 648
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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