The dialogic construction of self and other in response to terrorism.

Abstract

and on a bus. It was not just the violence and death that shocked people in UK, but the fact that the young men, the first suicide bombers in UK, were British, three of them born and brought up in a long-established Muslim community. After this event (which became known as 7/7), government and community leaders worked hard to prevent a violent backlash in Muslim communities in UK, and were, by and large, successful. However, the event caused much social and personal disruption, shifting notions of both Self and Other.The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of that disruption on people's personal and social landscapes through an applied linguistic study of talk in focus groups. If, as a society, we can better understand how people and groups respond to an ongoing threat of terrorist attack, we should be better able to offer support towards resilience and protection against fragility.The study forms part of a larger project investigating the dynamics of empathy in dialogue in times of uncertainty. 1 Empathy concerns how one person (the Self) emotionally and cognitively responds to another, how they understand how it is to be 'the Other'. 2 In this study, where focus groups discuss the risk of terrorism and its effects on their everyday lives, we attend to one particular aspect of empathy in dialogue: how the Other is dialogically constructed in relation to the Self. By tracing patterns of stabilization and variability in dialogic construction of Self and Other, post 7/7 and 9/11, the study aims to understand the impact of increased uncertainty on people's emotions, and on the voices and positions that people construct for themselves and for others.The study is innovative in applying a complex dynamic systems view of society, culture, cognition and discourse which allows researchers to attend to interdependencies of affective, cognitive and social factors in people's lives. This approach highlights the fluidity of constructions CONSTRUCTION OF SELF AND OTHER AFTER TERRORISM 1 of Self and Other as voiced in people's accounts, and how people move in and out of multiple social identities.

(De)humanization and trust in an asymmetric Muslim–Christian conflict: Heroes, Kafirs, and Satanas.

“…Likewise, Muslims are dehumanized through negative religious images such as Satanas (Satan) and demonyo (demon). We also note that the word terrorist is used to dehumanize Muslims, a phenomenon observed in past literature (Cameron et al, 2013).…”

“…Notions of (de)humanization during conflict are sensitive not only to contextual conditions of power asymmetry (Ran & Qi, 2019) and violent contexts (Calissendorff et al, 2019; Cameron et al, 2013) but also to religious orientations of the antagonists. Language and semantics of (de)humanization invoke religious righteousness like kafir (unbeliever) and Satanas (Satan), rather than the more secular Western strategies such as the linguistic deployment of imagery related to animals, children, robots, or machines.…”

“…Certain features of social systems have been identified as relevant to psychological conditions during conflict situations. Changes in the manner, intensity, and use of dehumanization metaphors stand contingent to context, shaped by characteristics of ingroup and outgroup, power relations, culture (Haslam, Loughnan, & Sun, 2011; Leyens et al, 2007), and contexts of violence, whether episodic (Cameron, Maslen, & Todd, 2013) or protracted (Calissendorff, Brosché, & Sundberg, 2019).…”

(De)humanization and (dis)trust: Representations of Muslims in the UK newspapers following the 7/7 London bombings.

“…Other research documents fear and discrimination experienced by Muslims following the 7/7 bombings (Hussain & Bagguley, 2012;. In line with these concerns, an applied linguistic study of emotional responses to the 7/7 bombings showed that Muslims felt that non-Muslims were "lumping" them with terrorists and with a broader group of undesirable foreigners in the UK (Cameron et al, 2013).…”

Enemies of freedom and defenders of democracy: The metaphorical response to terrorism

“…This article deals with speeches made by state leaders and metaphors related to terrorism – both topics that have also been explored by others (Ahrens, 2011; Cameron, 2007, 2010; Cameron, Maslen and Todd, 2013). Much has also been written about the metaphors used in the ‘War on Terror’ (Charteris-Black, 2011; Lakoff, 2001; Meadows, 2007; Oakley and Coulson, 2008; Steuter and Wills, 2008).…”