Language and conflict : a neglected relationship

The three essays on language and conflict presented in this text area a result of a growing awareness that researchers in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics and in the peace and conflict resolution field have much to say to each other.

In Dan Smith's analysis the idea of conflict brings us inexorably to nationalism, then to identify and thus to language.

Language is unlikely to be the central cause of conflict, but it may contribute to the ways that nationalsim and armed conflict unfold.

Paul Clinton argues that the declaration of war is a linguistic act, that military operations can only be set in motion and continued by verbal activity and that all political institutions are ultimately constituted by forms of language and communication.

In the final essay in the text Sue Wright examines the relationship between nation building (including linguistic unification) and the propaganda which justifies human and economic sacrifice,and permits total war in the Clausewitzian sense.

All three essays argue that the political influence, significance and effect of linguistic borders and the discourse manipulation of language are factors in conflict which should not be ignored.