Book review: The Religious Rhetoric of U.S. Presidential Candidates: A Corpus Linguistics Approach to the Rhetorical God Gap by Arnaud Vincent

Abstract

cursive opportunities such as resonance (perpetuating the salience of ISIS messages), legitimacy, and symbolic action. According to Hughes, ISIS leveraged a sophisticated brand messaging, positioning, and image craft into tacit, explicit, military, and monetary support for its self-proclaimed caliphate. Accordingly, treating ISIS itself as a brand will provide a better understanding of ISIS’s communication strategy. The author, presenting somewhat a strained interpretation, applies concepts such as ‘brand legacy,’ ‘reputation management,’ and ‘unique selling proposition’ in explaining ISIS’s overall communication strategy. Hughes concludes that the self-proclaimed caliphate was a product of the disintegrative characteristics of postmodernity. In ‘It’s More Than Orange,’ Richey and Edwards explore the use of iconic orange jumpsuits as resistance rhetoric to the West Four contributions and present innovative explanations of ISIS’s media strategy by departing from different theoretical and conceptual frameworks and exploring distinct aspects of the issue. They open up new venues for media and cultural studies scholars to understand the complexity of the Islamic State phenomenon. The chapters in the final part of the collection offer a deeper look at the narratives of the Islamic State. In ‘Western Millennials Explain Why They Joined the Islamic State,’ Pascarella analyzes the testimony of 20 Western millennials who joined ISIS and appear in official ISIS videos. Referring to Peter Dahlgren’s ‘circuit of civic cultures’ model, Pascarella notes that ISIS produces and transmediates an alternative news paradigm. Accordingly, the appeal of ISIS for Western millennials could be explained with attributed virtues of civic culture such as inclusive values (being part of something bigger and more meaningful than self), affinity (feeling of thick trust, brotherhood, and cultivating a sense of belonging to the overall collectivity), knowledge (counter-hegemonic messaging themes), practices and discussion, and identities. Chandrasekaran and Prephan analyze the discursive and mediatic construction of ISIS executioner Mohammed Emzawi as a monstrous media phenomenon, namely Jihadi John. Bruscella and Bisel explore how, in Dabiq, ISIS co-opted Western discourse on ISIS to legitimate its statehood claims and effectively distribute its message. In ‘Terror Remixed,’ Pennington focuses on the Stop the Christian Genocide Campaign and analyzes how ISIS media materials are remixed and used to attack ISIS itself. The Media World of ISIS, with its plural and innovative reading of the Islamic State’s media ecology, provides researchers from different disciplines with fundamental problems, questions, and findings. The collection will help us better understand the issue’s complexity and go beyond deterministic and reductionist accounts of ISIS’s political and ideological “success.”