‘If you see [blank], say [blank]’

Abstract

Abstract The September 11 terrorist attacks emerged as a turning point on security standards, contouring many aspects of public life ever after. Two decades later, the see something, say something campaign stands as one of the New York City trademarks. Its ubiquity across subway platforms intends to raise public awareness by transferring security responsibilities to the general public. Language is neither innocent nor merely instrumental, any more than is not neutral. This paper disentangles the construction of something in the current context, where the elusive definition of terrorism has enabled distorted perceptions of risk and certainty. The paper adopts a multimodal critical discourse analysis, focusing on the campaign’s use of ambiguity and its lexical and semiotic choices. Ultimately, it intends to crystallize how language resonates with a broader preemptive and never-ending War on Terror rhetoric while paving the way to further analyze the activation of the target of this campaign: you.