Linguistic Framing of Political Terror: Distant and Close Readings of the Discourse on Terrorism in the Swedish Parliament 1993–2018

• This paper provides a study of the discourse on terrorism in Swedish parliamentary debate 1993– 2018. The aim is to explore how terrorism is discursively constructed in parliamentary delibera- tions, drawing on the resources of Swe-Clarin in the form of the corpus tool Korp and the linguis- tic concept of ‘frame’. To map meanings attached to terrorism we pursue two research questions: what framing elements are connected to ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in parliamentary speeches as 1) simplexes and 2) as part of compounds along the lines of controversies and party affiliations? The latter research question is probed through distant and close readings of the specific compound statsterrorism (‘state terrorism’). Our findings show that terrorism is typically framed as located outside of Sweden and as tied to Islamism, but the question of what countries are associated with state terrorism depends on the political affiliation of the interlocutor. The compound statsterror- ism is most prominently used by the left and green parties and then commonly associated with Israel and Turkey. We conclude by suggesting that a widened inquiry into compounds, in general as well as diachronically, is likely a productive way of expanding the scope of our research.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

terrorism

parliamentary discourse

digital humanities

framing

corpus

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)