NCJ Number
104678
Journal
Terrorism Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: (1987) Pages: 373-407
Date Published
1987
Length
35 pages
Annotation
Contemporary terrorism combines selective violence with reliance on language to articulate terrorist motivations, beliefs, and objectives.
Abstract
Focusing on language, this interdisciplinary approach applies insights from contents and propaganda analysis, psycholinguistics, structural linguistics, and political and sociobiographic 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 terrorist's 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 indepth knowledge of the history and nature of terrorism in West Germany, the study illustrates the need to analyze terrorist statements as an aspect of understanding and coping with terrorism. (Author abstract)