The Discourse of Terror Threats: Assessing Online Written Threats by Nigerian Terrorist Groups
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Abstract
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Online threats by terrorist groups are viewed as a special type of
discourse that sends menacing explicit messages, expressing not only
an intention to cause a direct physical harm to the threatened, but also
to show a commitment to destroy public property or cause a change
of system or government. This study applies critical discourse analysis
with some insights from pragmatics to analyze the discoursepragmatic
contents of terror threats by two terrorist groups in
Nigeria—Boko Haram and Ansaru. Explicit and implied threats are
examined from seven online publications by these groups written
between 2009 and 2012. This study shows that terror threats by
Nigerian terrorist groups are intertextually and ideologically related to
threats associated with Al Qaeda and global jihad, which also goes
further to establish their strong link and influence with other terror
groups around the world. The findings also show that the structure of
terror threats is significantly different from the conventional formula
for verbal threats
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), PE English