"7/7 Londonbombs"

The language of terror is analysed through the newspaper representations of the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks on London. Employing the tools of discourse analysis, this paper investigates the reports of British national dailies published before and after the bombings, in order to highlight the ways in which the festive tone for the UK assignment of the 2012 Olympic Games is dramatically substituted by the rhetoric of a national identity under attack through narrations dwelling on the Blitz and on the resilience of Londoners. The newspaper narrations are structured on the tragedy of loss of individual lives and on the drama of deeply felt emotions involving the wounded, the passer-bys, the relatives of the dead.