Dualisms in Jihad: the role of metaphor in creating ideological dichotomies
Identificadores
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/100299Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Patterson, Katie JaneMateria
metaphor extremist language discourse analysis corpus linguistics
Fecha
2023Referencia bibliográfica
Patterson, K. J. 2023. ‘Dualisms in Jihad: The role of metaphor in creating ideological dichotomies’. Journal of Language Agression and Conflict, 11(1), pp.121-143
Patrocinador
This research serves a part of the project ISCID funded by the H2020 European Commission (H2020 MSCA-IF-2019-ID: 882556).Resumen
This paper explores how metaphors are employed in jihadist magazines to
promote a dichotomist worldview of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, ‘good’ versus ‘bad’,
‘east’ versus ‘west’ and ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’. It argues that juxtapositions in
both language and thought help writers to reaffirm and/or challenge certain
paradigms. The approach uses critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black
2004) to investigate qualitative evidence of conceptual metaphors, focusing
on the domains life is a seed, conflict is a relationship between
predator and prey, and faith is light/lack of faith is darkness.
Dichotomous language in these domains (e.g., ‘seed’ versus ‘weed’; ‘sheep’
versus ‘wolves’; the ‘spark of Jihad’ versus the ‘shadow’ of Western governments)
help to position extremist groups on the right side of a number of
paradigms. The use of binary metaphors also permits simultaneously conflicting
conceptualisations; for instance, jihadists are both innocent victims
and merciless defenders of their faith, depending on with who or what they
are juxtaposed. The research concludes that the use of binary metaphors
serves to underscore entrenched paradigms of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’, thus
allowing the writers to frame their discourse in a way that justifies and promotes
their extremist agenda