The Making of the ‘Soft Villain’ in a Time Magazine Headline
The Making of the ‘Soft Villain’ in a Time Magazine Headline

Summary/Abstract: On March 16, 2009, the American magazine “Time” published an article entitled “The Making of a Terrorist. How the lone surviving gunman of the Mumbai massacre made the long journey from a Pakistani village to a bloodstained railroad station.” Drawing on an interpretative approach to text (as particular instance of written interaction), the purpose of my contribution is to explore some of the sense-making devices used in the headline of this article by using the method of “membership categorization devices analysis” stemming from the tradition of ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The specific focus is on the ways in which the authors of the text achieve an unstated communicative goal along with their explicitly stated aim to make a point about the Kashmiri conflict by telling the story of one man and deeming it emblematic for the whole terrorism phenomenon in Pakistan. What I wish to show is not whether the explicit goal is reached or not, but rather that another, equally interesting communicative achievement is made. The actor of the story – a “terrorist” usually vilified in post 9/11 American media – is offered extenuating circumstances by portraying his actions as morally accountable: he has become involved in mass terrorism not because of ‘pure evil’ or ‘hatred’ but simply because he found himself at the wrong place and the wrong time and became the instrument of larger political interests, while following his, otherwise perfectly acceptable, personal goals (e.g. the desire to find an end to his enduring economic misery and escape his poverty-struck social milieu). He emerges thus as a “softened” version of the classical villain. The question that becomes relevant in this context and that I wish to answer is what mechanisms are used in the text to reflect this particular version of reality? More specifically, what are the devices this text uses to make the moral scaling-down of the “terrorist” act work?

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