Convergent, divergent, polarising, and deontic bonds in incitement texts: Relational dynamics aligned with audience design for identity fusion

Most work on incitement is grounded in speech act theory and impoliteness, but often overlooks the broader textual relational dynamics. This paper advances the SFL framework on affiliation as a relational-semiotic approach to incitement texts that operate (in Firthian terms) as a network of bonds and obligations. The approach builds on recent research into affiliation and disaffiliation strategies (Etaywe, 2024; Etaywe & Zappavigna, 2024) and incorporates insights from Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles et al., 2023), the Audience Design Paradigm (Bell, 1984), and the concept of identity fusion (Buhrmester et al., 2018). This analysis examines eight incitement-to-violence forensic texts delivered by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi used as a case study. It explores three key processes in incitement: Communion, Alienation, and Coercion – and their associated mechanisms for constructing bonds. Communion is the process of building shared identities and values that foster convergent bonds among in-group members. These bonds strengthen emotional ties, attitudinal rapport and collective action, often driven by perceived existential threats that intensify individual-into-group identity fusion. Alienation creates divergent bonds by positioning out-group members as threats, opposing poles, and ‘non-kin’, legitimising their exclusion and hostility toward them. Coercion extends bonds by not only urging but also framing urged violence as necessary, an obligation or expected commitment (i.e. deontic bonds) to protect the in-group’s shared values, symbolic power, or survival, reinforcing both convergent bonds and divergent bonds. Through the audience design paradigm lens, this study examines how inciters tailor their evaluative language to the in-group’s beliefs and values, giving rise to a polarised ‘attitudinal priming’ that serves to enhance group cohesion and to demonise the out-group and escalate aggression toward them. That is patterns of evaluative prosody prime attitudinal (dis)alignment and constantly associate positive attitudinal meaning with the in-group and negative attitude with the out-group to reinforce solidarity and polarisation. This evaluative stylistic shift has the potential to initiate relational changes that justify exclusion and hostility. Additionally, identity fusion serves to deepen group loyalty by fostering a visceral sense of oneness, blurring individual and collective identities and manipulating perception of out-groups. Constructed shared experiences, kinship ties and perceived threats to in-group’s essential values and interests operate as linguistic proxies for facilitating this fusion, driving extreme loyalty. This research expands accommodative affiliation tactics - through convergence, divergence, and deontic bonding. Bond construction mechanisms include lexical metaphor, intertextuality, iconisation, register-specific terms, kinship terms, in-group norms and values, threat construction, self-evident statements, and commands—relational insights crucial for law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies’ fuller understanding of how incitement texts operate in terrorism contexts.