The War on Terror Narrative analyzes three types of data--presidential speeches, U.S. media discourse, and focus group interviews--to provide a longitudinal and holistic study of the formation, circulation, and contestation of the Bush administration's narrative about the "war on terror." The narrative sustains, in Foucault's terms, a "regime of truth" by placing boundaries around what can meaningfully be said and understood about the subject. Adam Hodges illustrates that even as social actors resist the narrative and the policy it entails, they appropriate its language to be heard...

The War on Terror Narrative analyzes three types of data--presidential speeches, U.S. media discourse, and focus group interviews--to provide a longitudinal and holistic study of the formation, circulation, and contestation of the Bush administration's narrative about the "war on terror." The narrative sustains, in Foucault's terms, a "regime of truth" by placing boundaries around what can meaningfully be said and understood about the subject. Adam Hodges illustrates that even as social actors resist the narrative and the policy it entails, they appropriate its language to be heard...

Given the prevalence of war around the world, it is vital to understand the way discourse contributes to the promotion and positioning of war as a natural or inevitable response to international problems. In addition, it is equally necessary to examine the way discourse impacts projects of peace, which seek to displace discourses of war with alternative visions of the world. This volume examines specific contexts around the world in which discourse operates in the service of war or to build alternative visions of peace. Contributors, who have backgrounds in linguistics, anthropology,...