Masters Thesis

Terror and trickster

One of the ways in which rhetors stabilize the meaning of terrorism is through the vilification process. Two sets of artifacts were analyzed to explore the rhetorical mechanisms of and alternatives to radical vilification. The first set of artifacts demonstrates how Orthodox Terrorism Studies (OTS) scholars vilify and exclude Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) scholars and their ideas. I argue OTS scholars perform rhetorical exclusion (Sanchez, Stuckey, & Morris, 1999) through naming, shifting the burden of proof, and strategic silence (Endres, 2009) to vilify CTS scholars. The second set of artifacts focuses on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s rhetoric about ISIL from the first time they mentioned ISIL up to the execution of James Foley, a journalist. I analyze the speeches for vilification through rhetorical exclusion (naming and strategic silence), metaphors, and the Manichean dichotomy of Good vs. Evil. Finally, an alternative framework is offered to replace radical vilification. The alternative is the Trickster, an archetypal figure common to Native American and other indigenous discourse.

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