How ISIS represented enemies as ineffectual in Dabiq: A multimodal critical discourse analysis

Abstract

This paper is a multimodal critical discourse study of other-representation in ISIS’s magazine, Dabiq, It focuses on both the micro-level analysis of actor and action representation, and the macro-structure of negative other-depiction in Dabiq from both textual and visual perspectives. Through in-depth examination of linguistic and non-linguistic elements, the study aimed to unfold ISIS’s ideology at the global level, which is to construct its desired reality and eventually to recruit supporters. The analysis was carried out on fifteen issues of Dabiq following a conceptual and analytical framework within Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis employing Van Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic inventory. The results show a considerable number of systematic utilizations of discursive strategies by ISIS to belittle its enemies and downgrade their practices. Throughout Dabiq, the out-group participants are represented either as passive reactants who are afflicted by ISIS’s attacks or as powerless agents whose actions are trivial and carry no significant weight. Ineffectuality of ‘others’ has further been substantiated by the visual analysis. Deactivation of out-groups is closely tied to ISIS’s propaganda of self-alteration to achieve the double aim of casting fear among their adversaries and brainwashing the audience by twisting the reality, and persuading them that the enemies’ chance of winning this war is dim.