Carnegie Mellon University
April 14, 2011

Postdoctoral Fellow Adam Hodges Publishes "The War on Terror Narrative"

Postdoctoral Fellow Adam Hodges Publishes

While the policies of former President George W. Bush have been and will continue to be debated, a new book by Adam Hodges explores how the Bush administration effectively mobilized support for the war on terror through language. Hodges is the A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Humanities Fellow within CMU's Department of English.

Published by Oxford University Press, The War on Terror Narrative: Discourse and Intertextuality in the Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality analyzes the president's speeches along with dialogue in the media and among citizens to illustrate how the narrative was rhetorically built and reaffirmed - as well as challenged and contested.

"As a linguist, I became interested in how the Bush administration was able to successfully construct a narrative to explain a moment in history - 9/11 - and then wage two wars with the support of congress and the American people," said Hodges. "They created a simple narrative that was easy to understand and retell. Once it entered into public circulation, it took on a life of its own and became a widely shared cultural narrative."

Read the full press release here.

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