Post-terror attack discourse

The terror attacks of 2015-2016 in France occasioned a lot of commentary, which came out first in the media and in the political sphere. This dossier aims to analyse the unfolding of post-terror attack discourse and to do so relatively to other terror attacks in France and in the world. Media discourse is analyzed as well as the discourse of top State authorities, the discourse of intellectuals, experts, and ordinary citizens. The articles particularly consider the place given to emotions, the framing modalities of terrorist events and the degree of consensus expressed by post-terror attack discourse. In so doing they shed light on the way in which dominant mediatic and political discourse constitutes itself out of a plurality of discursive tones and registers, carrying the normative and emotion-laden injunction that one should feel concerned. The articles also pinpoint the contradiction between such injunctions and the calls to rationality that were repeatedly made to go beyond emotion and identify with clear-signtedness the causes of terrorism, in order to react to terror-attacks with efficiency.