Terrorism and language: A text‐based analysis of the German case

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary terrorism combines selective violence with reliance on language to articulate terrorist motivations, beliefs, and objectives. Focusing on language, this interdisciplinary approach applies insights from content and propaganda analysis, psycholinguistics, structural linguistics, and political and socio‐biographic analysis to major event‐related statements issued between 1972 and 1986 by the West German terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF). Semantic, lexical, and syntactic means used to produce altered meanings and achieve persuasion are isolated in the texts. RAF awareness of the need for and manipulability of language is contrasted with their rejection of language as a political tool. The terrorists’ verbal objective is to usurp the West German government's claims to legitimacy, morality, monopoly on the use of force, and popular support. The analysis concludes that the RAF's language component fails because of the unacceptability of terrorist claims and their feeble effort to articulate aims and politics to a wider audience. By combining linguistic assessment of texts with in‐depth knowledge of the history and nature of terrorism in