Counterterrorist, Terrorist, Language 

Counterterrorist state forces and terrorist insurgents compete to control not only
territory and populations but language. The success of counterterrorism, therefore, hinges
crucially on representational practices. Defeating terrorism in the long run requires both
undermining the legitimacy of political violence and its purveyors and opening space for the
pursuit of a less violent but still legitimate politics, and these are fundamentally rhetorical
projects. Yet the literature has not shed much light on either the range of conceivable
counterterrorist representational strategies or on states’ particular representational
choices. This article presents and illustrates a typology of counterterrorist representational
strategies. It argues that state leaders should ideally delegitimize the extremists’ means
while politicizing some of their aspirations. Leaders often do not pursue this rhetorical
path, however, due to the constraints imposed by existing understandings of terrorist
organizations and especially by foundational discourses. These arguments are explored
empirically through studies of the Indian, Spanish, and Turkish counterterrorist campaigns.
The article concludes by extending the framework to clarify why the militarized rhetoric
of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is counterproductive. 

26 p.; 23 cm