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Discourse of Post-9/11 US Security Organisations

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The Discourse of Security

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Abstract

This chapter investigates rhetorical strategies deployed in the web-pages of U.S. security agencies which were reformed in the aftermath of 9/11, to determine whether they present argumentation relating to a state of exception. To expose rhetorical content, strategies are examined which operate at two levels within our corpus. Argument schemes and underlying warrants are identified through close examination of systematically selected core documents. Semantic fields establishing themes of threat and danger are also explored, using automatic corpus tools to expose patterns of lexical selection established across the whole corpus. The chapter uncovers evidence of rhetoric broadly consistent with the logic predicted by theories of exception, but also presents more nuanced findings whose interpretation require careful reappraisal of core ideas within theories of exception.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Malcolm N. MacDonald

  2. School of Education, University of Hull, Hull, UK

    Duncan Hunter

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  1. Malcolm N. MacDonald
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  2. Duncan Hunter
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Correspondence to Malcolm N. MacDonald .

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MacDonald, M.N., Hunter, D. (2019). Discourse of Post-9/11 US Security Organisations. In: The Discourse of Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97193-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97193-3_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97192-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97193-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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