Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This discourse study analyzes the Bush Administration’s use of a religious mode of representation to make sense of the 9/11 events and to legitimize military actions against the Taliban, Afghanistan, and terrorism in general. The religious mode of representation is enabled by the construction and application of what we call the “War on Terrorism script,” which was used to imbue empirical events with particular symbolic meanings associated with the American civil religion. Specifically, the script helped created a coherent account for—in the terms of Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism—the act (what was done), scene (when or where it was done), agent (who did it), agency (how was it done), and the purpose (why was it done) of the 9/11 events. This paper demonstrates the unique power of this mode of representation to create a coherent account at a time of national crisis and to establish connections between the 9/11 perpetrators, the al Qaeda network, and the Afghanistan government. The grounding of the War on Terrorism script in American civil religion also contributed to its power to defeat competing modes of representing these events, notably intellectual, rational, and legal challenges. Overall, the initially ambiguous situations of 9/11 were defined as a war between the American civil religion and those who were against it; the War on Terror symbolic world was created.