Among the common interrogations raised by different sub-fields of political science, one has received a growing importance in recent years: the role of emotions (Jasper 1998, Crawford 2000, Lebow 2005). These statements also frequently underline the difficulty to find methods in order to detect this aspect of reality. However, some interesting perspectives have been proposed in order to capture “emotions” and several approaches could be valuable for various subfields of political science: the identification of emotions by linguistic or semiotic analysis, the study of the sensibilization systems, the study of non-recognition in discourse analysis. We will illustrate the value of a methodological synergie in studying the London bombings 2005. For instance, we combine content analysis – stressing the frequency of non-recognition words – with discourse analysis - stressing more how leaders frame reality via definitions of reality such as sharp “we” - “they” dichotomies.
