ABSTRACT
The linguistic content analyses systems used in the present special issue covered a large range of conceptual and methodological approaches from many of the major researchers in the field. Taking a broad view of this massive set of results, what can we learn about terrorist groups' rhetoric? We present here a summary set of analyses that suggests terrorist rhetoric (compared to non-terrorist control groups) was more social in nature, contained more rhetoric reflecting control and power, and was consistently lower on multiple measurements of rhetoric complexity. Further, analyses on automated systems suggested that the typical terrorist style of rhetoric became even more exaggerated among terrorist groups as an impending violent attack by their group neared. This study highlights the benefits of conducting linguistic content analyses of terrorist groups' public rhetoric. Applied rigorously, this method can contribute to our understanding of how these groups differ from their non-terrorist counterparts and potentially provide indicators of when they may be ready to engage in further violent activity.
