Graham et al

199
From abstract:

"We present four exemplary ‘call to arms’ speeches by Pope Urban II (1095),
Queen Elizabeth I (1588), Adolf Hitler (1938) and George W. Bush (2001) to
exemplify the structure, function, and historical significance of such texts in
western societies over the last millennium. We identify four generic features
that have endured in such texts throughout this period: (i) an appeal to a
legitimate power source that is external to the orator, and which is presented as
inherently good; (ii) an appeal to the historical importance of the culture in
which the discourse is situated; (iii) the construction of a thoroughly evil
Other; and (iv) an appeal for unification behind the legitimating external power
source."
200
"The primary analytical focus of our article is the significance of Bush’s (2001)
‘war on terror’ address. To locate Bush’s speech historically within the ‘call to
arms’ genre, and to identify the generic features of ‘call to arms’ texts more
generally, we gathered a corpus of 120 such texts from the past millennium. We
present four of those as exemplars for detailed analysis: the speech at Clermont by
Pope Urban II (1095)1 launching the first crusade; the speech at Tilbury by Queen
Elizabeth I (1588)2 launching a war against the Spanish; the speech at the
Reichstag by Adolf Hitler (1938)3 prior to Germany’s annexation of Austria; and
the speech at the White House by George W. Bush (2001) declaring a ‘war on
terror’."

" they
also share great significance in terms of their epochal character for western
societies. Each oration occurred at periods that are recognized as historical turning
points, and each contributed to significant epochal change, by which we
mean fundamental change in social, political, and economic conditions across
large geographical spaces, and over long periods." has this been borne out?

Background reasons:
Urban II - dealing with "dynastic privilege" - primogeniture - conquer new lands to the east

Elizabeth - Cathlolicism/ transition (Henry sacred/ secular)

Hilter - overextension of Neoclassical Capital; rise of communism - industrial nations - global capital

201
" He
also speaks at a time of radical social, economic, and political upheaval.
Following the sudden collapse of Sovietism, ‘globalization’, now a fast-fading
shibboleth, dominated economic and political discourses throughout the 1990s.
It denoted the de-nationalization of economic activity in favour of a ‘global
economy’ based on rabid speculation and ‘dotcom’ hype, and had apparently
failed following the ‘tech wreck’ of 2001 and the subsequent corporate governance
scandals (Enron, Worldcom, K-Mart, HIH, United Airlines, etc.) both in the
US and elsewhere. Depression loomed. Throughout the ‘developed’ world (i.e.
OECD countries), political parties had lost their traditional constituencies, and
extremist political parties were emerging to challenge the increasingly undifferentiated
two-party systems common to most OECD countries (cf. McKenna,
2000; Wodak, 2000). Political cynicism was the order of the day. George W.
Bush, so it is widely claimed, stole the 2000 election and was widely perceived as
an illegitimate president installed by a politicized, partisan judiciary (Miller,
2002)."

" The most perennial of these are: (i) an appeal to a legitimate power
source that is external to the orator and which is presented as inherently good; (ii)
an appeal to the historical importance of the culture in which the discourse is
situated; (iii) the construction of a thoroughly evil Other; and (iv) an appeal for
unification behind the legitimating external power source."

202
generic nature:
" Specifically, we show how
the ultimate in exhortatory functions has been typically, which is to say generically,
achieved over time; the particularities of such texts that have changed; how
such generic similarities and particular differences are expressed in Bush’s
(2001) declaration of a ‘war on terror’;"

" Our analysis shows that over the period of our study the generic structure
of ‘call to arms’ discourses has not altered in any significant way. Such texts
contain four similar and similarly powerful constituents: a legitimating power
source external to the orator; the history (mythologically, world-historically, or
otherwise conceived) of the social system in which the text is located; an evil and
aberrant Other; and a unifying construct (religious, racial, political, philosophical,
or nationalistic) that links members of the social system to the externally
legitimating power source invoked by the orator."

" By focusing on the particularities of each of these constituents in the four
texts we present here, and of their relationship to the broader social system in
which they were uttered, we foreground changes in the ‘orders or discourse’ over
time in ‘western’ societies (Fairclough, 1992). The prevailing order of discourse
is clearly a resource which political leaders draw upon to achieve the dramatic
and ostensibly unnatural exhortations we focus upon here – the exhortation
to kill and die for a cause external, and, practically by definition, antithetical to
that of the individuals being asked to kill and die.4 By focusing on the changing
particularities of generic constituents in ‘call to arms’ texts over the last millennium
we necessarily expose the changing orders of discourse at macro-social
and macro-historical levels, as well as identifying the implications of such
changes which can be described in terms of what Fairclough (1992: 70) calls
‘investment’:
If we apply the concept of investment here, we can say that elements, local orders of
discourse, and societal orders of discourse are potentially experienced as contradictorily
structured, and thereby open to having their existing political and ideological
investments become the focus of contention in struggles to deinvest/reinvest them.

 203
Church response to Lisbon earthquakes - liberating
 "Similarly, it seems that the post-9/11 milieu presents the global political order,
and the political philosophy of ‘democracy’ touted by pro-war forces in the US
and elsewhere, with increased challenges to its moral authority. As we write,
habeas corpus has been suspended for the first time in the United States since the
civil war; the most basic of human rights outlined in the US constitution have
been set aside under the so-called Patriot Acts; and the authority of the United
Nations Security Council has been ignored as a US-led ‘coalition of the willing’
invades Iraq in a war that is by many accounts illegal under international law,
and utterly unpredictable in terms of its future consequences (Russow, 2003)."

"However, far more interesting than the generic
features themselves are the kinds of changes that become apparent when we
focus on the particularities of those features throughout history. Doing so directs
us towards seeing the nature of changes in the particularities of generic constituencies
over time and, consequently, towards seeing how changes in social,
political, and economic formations are expressed in and changed by the most
extreme political exhortations. Changes in generic particularities express
changes in the ‘societal order of discourse’ (Fairclough, 1992). For example, differences
in the externally legitimating force drawn upon by Urban (who calls on
God) and Elizabeth (who calls on God and Country) indicate an emergent nationalism
that Hitler later invokes to achieve his political goals."

 204
"Pope Urban’s speech marks the beginning
of ‘second age’ feudalism (Bloch, 1962). Elizabeth’s speech marks the waning of
feudalism and the emergence of national consciousness, a mercantilist world
economy, the emergence of private property; and the strengthening of institutionalized
Protestantism (cf. Mun, 1664; Questier, 1997). Hitler’s speech marks
the triumph of corporatism and nationalism in the west (Saul, 1992); and Bush’s
marks the emergence of changes that have yet to be either fully understood or
described."

Urban - crusade is the will of god
205
implied individual responsibility - success in launching the crusades

" While the crusades
themselves were disastrous in humanitarian terms, resulting in the slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of people and enduring religious schisms and
antagonisms, they initiated fundamental changes in Christian and Islamic
societies, the effects of which are still being expressed. These include the ultimate
decline of formal feudalism, an end to political and intellectual isolation in
Western Europe, the unification and strengthening of the European monarchies,
the growth of maritime commerce, and intense religious intolerance (Braudel,
1987/1993)."

"By the 12th century, the
monarchy and the papacy stood in inverse, almost symmetrical, and mutually
defining relationships with each other. While the Pope is the temporal representative
of God on earth, the monarch is the ‘representative’ of the Commonwealth.
He is ‘the minister of the common interest . . . and bears the public person’ (John
of Salisbury, 1159/1909, cited in Dickinson, 1926). In the formal and ‘conscious
feudalism’ of the 12th century, the monarch is the personification of a geographically
defined community, whereas the Pope personifies God’s spiritual reign
over the whole of humanity (Dickinson, 1926). By the 16th century, centuries of
struggle between church and state resulted in Henry VIII’s fusion of these historical
powers in the midst of a rising wave of Protestantism throughout Western
Europe (Braudel, 1987/1993)."


 206
"Elizabeth is able to fuse the nascent nationalism of the 16th century with waning
feudal attitudes to religious affairs. Consequently, Elizabeth appeals to numerous
external sources of power in order to gain her desired result:
[2] I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being
resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down,
for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even
the dust. [. . .] we shall shortly have a famous victory over the enemies of my God, of
my kingdom and of my people.
In Extract [2] we see clear evidence of hybridity in the external source of legitimacy:
the omnibus fusion of my God, my kingdom, my people, my honour and
my blood, and even the dust are the external sources of legitimacy for Elizabeth’s
‘call to arms’. As such, she fuses the moral values of a fading feudalism (honour
and kingliness), a redefined Catholic (Protestant) theology (my God), with those
of a fast-developing sense of race and place (blood and dust) (de Santillana and
von Dechend, 1962/1999) which would later become the bases of fully blown
nationalism."
I'd  like to see more!
"[3] The German people is no warlike nation. It is a soldierly one which means it does
not want a war but does not fear it. It loves peace, but it also loves its honour and
freedom.
The new Reich shall belong to no class, no profession, but to the German people. It
shall help the people find an easier road in this world. It shall help them in making
their lot a happier one. Party, state, armed forces, economics are institutions and
functions which can only be estimated as a means toward an end. They will be judged
by history according to the services they render toward this goal. Their purpose,
however, is to serve the people.
I now pray to God that he will bless in the years to come our work, our deeds,..."
207
 "In Extract [3] we see the totality of German institutions subsumed under a
conception of nationalist socialism. Party, state, armed forces, economics are
means to an end, namely the future happiness of the German people. We also see
the continuation of hybridity in external sources of power. God has clearly taken
a second place to nationalism – while Hitler’s almighty God rates a mention, this
God is not of the main legitimating force for aggression. That place is clearly occupied
by the German nation, which in Extract [3] is presented as being identical to
the German people. Hitler achieves this through a grammatical ‘sleight of hand’,
so to speak, by nominalizing the German people as a singular entity and deploying
a ‘Carrier^Attribute’ construction (Halliday, 1994): The German people
<Carrier> [is] no warlike nation <Attribute>. By presenting the German people as
a singular entity and negatively assigning ‘it’ the Attributes of a warlike nation,
and by ambiguous use of the pronoun ‘it’ in the following sentences, an implicit
(if not grammatical) identity is drawn between the German people and the
German nation."

"The nation is
further anthropomorphized and begins having desires, feelings, inclinations, and
self-knowledge: it does not want a war; but does not fear it. It loves peace, but it also
loves its honour and freedom. Hitler’s externally legitimating force is a race-based
conception of the German people and also, through the relationships he creates
between German people,"

League of Nations

208
"He addresses his international legitimacy crisis by decrying the League
of Nation’s legitimacy, which he claims has its raison d’être in the ongoing
oppression of German people. He addresses his national audience by providing a
powerful, unifying image of the future in which the German people are the primary
beneficiaries of every organ (state, commercial, military, etc.) comprising
German society."





"The speech given by George W. Bush five days after the 11 September terrorist
attacks, demonstrates the continued dominance of the nation-state as the primary
source of legitimate political power at the turn of the 21st century. Prior to
the 9/11 attacks, Bush, like Urban II, Elizabeth I, and Hitler, suffered from a crisis
of legitimacy"...

"Here, the identity of people and nation is presumed, and the national anthropomorph
emerges immediately: We <Carrier> [are] a great nation <Attribute>.
We <Carrier> [are] a nation of resolve <Attribute>, a nation that can’t be cowed by
evil-doers <Attribute>. Faith becomes a matter of believing in the nation itself –
‘one nation under God’, as the pledge of allegiance has it."

209
 "it is clear that the external power
sources – from appeals to God to Monarchy to Nation-State to ultra-nationalist
sentiment to the assumed moral superiority of two-party democracies – have not
simply supplanted one another throughout history; they have been successively
layered, one upon the other, to produce the discourse that Bush instantiates:
[4a] Today, millions of Americans mourned and prayed, and tomorrow we go back to
work. Today, people from all walks of life gave thanks for the heroes; they mourn the
dead; they ask for God’s good graces on the families who mourn, and tomorrow the
good people of America go back to their shops, their fields, American factories, and go
back to work. [. . .] This is a new kind of – a new kind of evil. And we understand. And
the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism
is going to take a while.
With the words in Extract [4a], Bush conflates a millennium of external sources
of legitimacy: by drawing on discourses of nationalism, heroism, and a national
work ethic; by drawing on the authority and support of God; by aligning God with
the nation-state; and, finally, by announcing a national crusade against a new
kind of evil, Bush demonstrates that a successful contemporary response to a
crisis in political legitimacy – exacerbated by an unprecedented attack upon his
nation – draws upon the totality of a thousand years of history."
210
Historical Mythology - Urban, Elizabeth, Hitler - nationalism!!
211
"It is worth noting that the jungles of Vietnam have been removed from this US
pantheon of popular mythology. From the Iwo Jima beachhead and the desert of
El Alamein, to the ‘Wild West’ of farmers, ranchers (and, implicitly, sheriffs and
outlaws), to entrepreneurial business owners and their (now predominantly
foreign-based) factory workers, to the US administration, Bush presents the US as
a nation of workers who get the job done and do it better than anybody else.
Representations of historical mythologies . . . pop histories . . . are clearly as much
a reflection of the societies in which they are presented as they are a resource for
successfully producing exhortations to war."


212 - Evil other
 Urban
 "to the societal order of discourse: an accursed race has invaded the Holy Land and
removed people by pillage and fire, killed them by cruel tortures, destroyed
churches or defiled them by conducting the rites of an alien religion within their
sacred confines."

Elizabeth
"Her enemies are therefore ‘the enemies
of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people’. An emergent national consciousness,
as well as a proprietorial attitude towards land, is also evident when
Elizabeth thinks ‘foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should
dare to invade the borders of my realms’"

Hitler
"Jews, communists, lunatics, criminals, terrorists, reactionaries, critical scholars,
aberrant theological types . . . all are opposed to the highest form of prayer, of
uniting man with his God: work. In many senses, by constructing a negative form
of aberrance to define evil, that is, by identifying the evil Others as those who are
either not German (Aryan) or not supportive of the Reich, Hitler’s programme of
demonization is all the more powerful because it creates an evil Other category
that potentially includes everybody, any person and, indeed, any ideas that can be
defined as dissent."

Bush
"[4c] We’re a nation that can’t be cowed by evil-doers.
We will rid the world of the evil-doers. We will call together freedom loving people to
fight terrorism [. . .]
. . . we’re facing a new kind of enemy, somebody so barbaric that they would fly airplanes
into buildings full of innocent people. [. . .]"

213
elasticity
 "Bush’s is a very elastic definition of an evil Other: evil-doers, terrorists, suicide
bombers; barbaric, evil people who burrow their way into society and lurk in
order to kill innocent people. They do so because they can’t stand freedom and
hate what America stands for. They are not anti-Christ; they are anti-American,
and that is their ultimately defining feature. They live in many countries and have
no uniting feature other than their terrorizing objectives. But Bush pledges to rid
the world of evil-doers. Of course, his crusade, his war on terror by freedom
loving people will take a while, as well it may."

214
Later ... "The currently proposed ‘Patriot Act II’ goes further, creating 15
new death penalties for acts that intentionally or unintentionally cause death,
and declaring martial law (Congress of the United States of America, 2003).
Bush’s devil, like his definition of evil, as it has been said before, is in the detail."

United Behind the Greater Good
 "He does so in such a way as
to offer the Franks an ultimatum. Urban identifies the penalties that will be
incurred for those who make excuses for not joining the crusade:"

"Elizabeth again deploys a hybrid appeal to feudal and mercantile rewards, a
‘booty’ based redistribution strategy, albeit without the promise of heaven. She
promises her soldiers earthly rewards for their participation in the war against
Spain:"

"Hitler adopts a more contemporary political Utopian strategy, explaining how the
Nazi’s policies will create a unified, Utopian nation-state, one that reflects the
widespread socialist hopes of the day and the ‘Socialist’ part of the Nazi Party’s
name (National Socialist Party):
[3d] The new Reich shall belong to no class, no profession, but to the German people."

"Bush uses an omnibus, though clearly individualistic, self-centred appeal that
fuses faith in God, State, and people with his Utopian vision of future peace and
promises for retribution:


215
"As with particular external sources of legitimate power, the method of appealing
for unity behind a particular source has changed and compounded over the
period of our study. This reflects a change in the societal order of discourse, as
well as indicating the increasing speed at which such orders are changing and
being reinvested with new meaning."

216

" homogeneous sheen to proceedings, however gruesome and murderous; in
which ‘democracy’, ‘peace’, and ‘freedom’ are trumpeted as rationales for mass
murder carried out against the will of citizenries, and without the legal sanction
of ‘the international community’; in which language, images, and media are a
significant part of the weaponry of mass destruction – the question for discourse
analysts, applied linguists, and the like is this: what do we do? Halliday (1993) has
long since drawn the connection between ‘discourse, dollars, and death’, yet we
find ourselves confronted once again involved in a campaign of organized
killings, backed and instigated by discourse and dollars." Reminds me of frustration in ecological issues; difficult to see the same patterns over and over again.
"Martin and Rose (2003) suggest that the challenge for discourse analysis is to
show how emancipation, as well as domination, is achieved through discourse;
that an analytical focus on ‘hegemony’ must be balanced with a focus on
discourses of empowerment – discourses designed to ‘make peace, not war’, that
successfully ‘redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it’ (2003;
cf. Martin, 1999); and that analysis needs to move away from ‘demonology’ and
‘deconstruction’ towards the design of ‘constructive’ discourse (Martin, in press).
These are certainly important considerations for the theory and practice of
discourse analysis. At least as important to our mind are clear understandings of
macro-social, macro-cultural and macro-economic changes, all of which can be
seen quite clearly from a discourse–historical perspective – in a process of historical
reconstruction – to grasp human history as a seamless, unbroken whole. It has
become clear that in what is called ‘a global knowledge economy’, meanings and
their mediations perform increasingly important and overt political–economic
functions (cf. Graham, 2002; Fairclough and Graham, 2002)...."


"
217
 "Similarly, whichever group perpetrated the attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon also fully recognized it: the attacks were directed
at symbolic centres of a globally hegemonic system and were designed specifically
for their mass media impact. Merely exposing facts and breaking silences (as per
Chomsky and Pilger) is not enough either; the current malaise is primarily
axiological (values based). Discursive interventions at the axiological level are
necessary in the policy field, in the multiple fields of mass media, and in every
local field. Ours is a discourse-based global society, a discourse-based global
economy, and a discourse-based global culture. Consequently, humanity has
never been so close to realizing our ‘species-being’ (Marx, 1844/1975) – our
universal humanity – whilst simultaneously being so close to achieving selfannihilation.
Discursive interventions will necessarily be decisive in the outcome
between these two paths."