INTRODUCTION
Ulisse Belotti is a professor of English at the Faculty of Economics and Commerce of the University of Bergamo. His main publications concern the formation of speech, the language of information technologies and the characteristics of legal language, with particular reference to arbitration.
SUMMARY
Social realities are often negotiated and determined by elite groups of society, including political and religious leaders, the mass media, and even professional experts, who give meaning to complex, multifaceted constructs such as terrorism consistent with their individual socio-political agendas. The Bush Administrations National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NSCT) (2003) defines what we the public and media understand by the term terrorism; who are terrorists; what constitutes terrorism; how we can fight terrorism, etc.
More
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), orientalism, and attack vs. self-defence, typically realised through the use of rhetorical resources such as category work, appeals to historicity, negative other-presentation, and the use of metaphor, are utilised. Metaphors are used to construct new and alternate realities. WPMs allow a subjective conceptualisation of reality to appear more convincing through the invocation of emotions and ideologies.