Shifting Enemy Lines in the War on Terror. An Analysis on the Linguistic Representations of the War on Terror in U.S. News Media in the Post-Bush Era

Sammanfattning: This paper examines the discourses surrounding the ‘War on Terror’ rhetorical catchphrase in the U.S. news media in the post-Bush era. Using a combined framework of corpus linguistics with a discourse analytical approach, news articles are examined for discursive and linguistic patterns surrounding the War on Terror, or more specifically, the ways in which the perceived enemy-other is represented in the media. The analysis of the data not only revealed the presence of certain resistant features in the linguistic representation of the enemy-other, but also uncovered how nominals of neutral semantic preference may be used both as means of legitimising ‘Us’, and as means of delegitimising ‘Them’. Additionally, the data also revealed other areas of conflict, which are reflective and indicative of a possible change in attitudes toward the War on Terror following George W Bush’s presidential term in office. In light of the results of the investigation, the paper concludes by identifying other key areas for further studies to be conducted.