“No one is born a terrorist” : A study of Securitization, Human Rights and Terrorism

Sammanfattning: Securitization is the move in which an issue is argued to pose an existential threat to a referent object and has to be resolved with extraordinary measures. Speech acts are considered to be the starting point for the securitization of an issue. This thesis viewed governmental counter-terrorism strategies as potential carriers of speech acts - hence the strategies could constitute the start of terrorism becoming securitized by a government. By using a generic speech act typology created by Holger Stritzel, which combines critical discourse analysis with the securitization theory on Swedish and British counter-terrorism strategies, the thesis identifies a speech act in the most recent British strategy. The second finding is that in the case where the speech act occurred, the human rights discourse was significantly lower, compared to the cases where no speech act occurred. The thesis also provides suggestions for future research on the topic of speech acts.