Abstract:
This study aims to problematize the assumptions of post-positivist and post-structuralist theories
regarding the productive power of language. It seeks to address certain critical deficiencies in the
conceptualization of power within these theoretical paradigms. The existing models of productive
power do not account for how some discourses become efficacious while other do not as well as
these theories are unable to recognize the intimate interplay of emotions and language in terrorism
discourse. This research aims at unfolding how emotions are infused with language to construe the
events in specific manner and then contribute to shape emotional responses to the events. This
study also endeavors to demonstrate how emotions generated by United States’ officials, leaders
and policy makers provoked and contributed to war on terror. This by extension explicate the role
of emotions in international relations and peace and conflict studies. The discourse-emotion nexus
is unfolded with the help of the strategy “interpreting emotions” which extracts emotion terms
from the discourse for thematic analysis. The speeches, interviews, statements, remarks and
official documents of US leaders, policy makers and officials from September 2001 to December
2004 were selected and date was divided into five main themes such as fear, anger, hate, grief and
hostility for an exhaustive investigation. The findings of the study indicate that in the context of
war on terror emotions were interpreted in a particular way through discourse to galvanize certain
actions. The emotional campaign was orchestrated to validate and promote a range of both
international and domestic political initiatives. These include actions such as altering regimes in
nations like Iraq, extending military presence to new areas like Afghanistan, bolstering military
power and influence, establishing domestic and global surveillance systems, exerting influence
over international institutions, and more broadly, upholding and expanding a Western-centric
liberal global order.
