The presidential Rhetoric of terror: The (re)creation of reality immediately after 9/11

Abstract

This article examines six presidential speeches/statements ranging from Bush’s remarks on the night of the terrorist attacks to his (in)famous State of the Union address declaring Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “Axis of Evil.” Using qualitative content analysis to investigate closely the six speeches for their “reality creating” and “persuasive” rhetoric, the study scrutinizes Bush’s allegorical creation of the “identity” of the enemy. David Zarefsky’s concept of the “Power of Definition” and Carl Schmitt’s notion of the “state of exception” are applied to the shifting rhetoric of Bush’s speeches. The article concludes that Bush used increasingly strong language after the September 11 attacks to create a war-like aporia and that Bush’s rhetoric set the limits of discursive definition, and hence created the parameters of thought regarding the issue of terrorism. © 2007 Wiley. All rights reserved.