This paper is a case study examining the words of one young Muslim woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who moved from her home in Scotland to join the ISIS fighters in Syria. Her Tumblr blog provides a linguistic, political, and ideological record of the process of her radicalization. We identify linguistic patterns in her blog posts that can help to develop and reveal a typology of the language of female radicalization. It helps to better understand why do young Muslim women radicalize and undertake high-risk political behaviors, and what factors influence their sociopolitical transformation. The process of radicalization happens because of individual, social, and political dynamics, and is facilitated by the availability of computer-mediated communication. By evaluating their language, we can better understand how their personal, social, and political development unfolds.
2020