Social representations of peace in terrorism talk: a UK talk-radio analysis

This paper employs combined critical discourse analysis/ membership categorization analysis to examine social representations of peace that appear within two UK talk radio debates about terrorism. After an initial overview of how and where social representations of peace feature throughout the data, three extended sequences of talk are subject to detailed discursive analysis. Whilst a range of Muslim and non-Muslim callers participate in these debates, analysis identifies that it is only Muslim speakers who engage social representations of peace. Analysis of three differing elite Muslim speakers reveals that in these debates: (i) peace is positioned as central to Muslim identity but also as a common value that is accessible to non-Muslims and Muslims alike; (ii) upholding and maintaining peace and challenging violent ideologies is constructed as an ongoing moral duty for Muslim communities; (iii) upholding peace as core to Islam does not mandate an absolute rejection of all violence in all contexts. These findings are discussed in the context of mainstream UK terrorism discourse where Muslim category membership and adherence to Islam is routinely linked to concerns regarding the presumed threat of extremist terror attacks in the UK.