LINGUISTIC MARKERS OF EXTREMISM IN ISLAMIST TEXTS OF THE RELIGIOUS GENRE “SERMON”: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECT

Linguistic examination of texts with allegedly extremist content is carried out using special methods. The most popular today are lexical-semantic, semantic-syntactic methods, as well as the method of discourse anal-ysis, which allow an expert linguist to make an objective expert opinion on the issues raised. An expert linguist conduc ting an examination of texts with allegedly extremist content has to identify linguistic markers of extrem-ism that are implemented at all language levels. The linguistic examination of Islamist discourse texts involves taking into account genre features of a religious text, having an impact on linguistic markers. Islamist discourse is understood as texts related to political radical trends of Islamism. The article presents fundamental diff erenc-es between the terms “Islam” as a world religion and “Islamism” as a political trend. We propose an algorithm for the me thodology of analyzing texts of allegedly extremist content based on the material of an Islamist text of the “sermon” genre, the main function of which is to instruct believers. Linguistic markers of extremism in the sermon genre are identifi ed during the analysis and are classifi ed according to their main functions: motivation and appeal, negation, demonstration of the superiority of one person or group of persons over other people based on nationality, origin and attitude to religion. These linguistic markers are implemented using the following lin-guistic means: morphological (verbs of obligation, verbs of the 2nd person singular or plural in the imperative mood, the form of the imperative of the 1st person plural); syntactic (particles in imperative sentences, complex sentences with subordinate clauses, addresses in combination with verbs in the imperative mood of the 2nd per-son plural); rhetorical means (rhetorical questions, antithesis); lexical and semantic means (nouns, verbs and oth-er parts of speech with negative connotations); morphemic and word-formation means (comparative, superlative forms). The identifi ed linguistic markers realize the function of demonstrating superiority, appeal, negativity in relation to “strangers”, “others”.