Civilization and civilized in post-9/11 US presidential speeches

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show, by means of an analysis of the occurrences of civilization and civilized in a corpus of US presidential speeches that spans three years (2001—4), that despite claims to the contrary, the New World Order discourse contains a `clash of civilizations' frame, at least since the terrorist attacks of 2001. We have analysed the occurrences of civilization and civilized using a three-fold approach: (a) a Narrative Conceptualization Analysis of civilization; (b) a Membership Categorization Analysis of the collocation civilized world; and, to a lesser extent, (c) an analysis of the rhetorical strategies in which civilization and civilized participate.