This book explores how language constructs the meaning and praxis of security in the 21st century. Combining the latest critical theories in poststructuralist and political philosophy with discourse analysis techniques, it uses corpus tools to investigate four collections of documents harvested from national and international security organisations. This interdisciplinary approach provides insights into the ways in which discourse has been mobilised to construct a strategic response to major terrorist attacks and geo-political events. The authors identify the way in which it is used to realize tactics of governmentality and form security as a discipline. This at once constructs a state of exception while also adhering to the principles of liberalism. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of subjects such as applied linguistics, political science, security studies and international relations, with additional relevance to other areasincluding law, criminology, sociology and economics.

Malcolm N. MacDonald is Associate Professor in the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. His research focuses on poststructuralist discourse theory and institutional discourse, medical discourse and the discourse of security; as well as intercultural communication, intercultural ethics and postcolonial theory. He has published extensively on discourse analysis, intercultural communication, and language education.
Duncan Hunter is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the University of Hull, UK. His current research and teaching interests are corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and ELT professional history. Within discourse analysis, he has a particular interest in the combination of techniques, including conversational analysis, argumentation, functional grammar and corpus linguistics, to reveal features of spoken and written texts.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Locating the discourse.- Chapter 3: Postdisciplinary security discourse.- Chapter 4: Disciplinarity and discourse.- Chapter 5: Analysing security discourse.- Chapter 6: Biopolitics, governmentality, and the banopticon.- Chapter 7: Discourse of citizenship and security.- Chapter 8: Discourse of Olympic security.- Chapter 9: Discourse of nuclear proliferation.- Chapter 10: Discourse of post-9/11 US security organisations.- Chapter 11: Language, illiberalism and governmentality.