Language in Conflict

Lesley Jeffries

University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom

Workshop

Conventional linguistic impoliteness Jonathan Culpeper
How does conflict start? Derek E Bousfield
Introduction: The place of Linguistics in Conflict Resolution Studies Lesley Jeffries, Dave Webb
Towards a typology of conflict situations: with an attempted application Jim O'Driscoll

Language in Conflict

Keywords: conflict, impoliteness, CDA, models of communication, opposition, conflict resolution.

The contemporary social constructivist emphasis in the social sciences implies an integral role for language in constituting psychological and social realities (Shotter 1993). However, this recognition of the importance of language has barely touched the mainstream of conflict studies. One reason for this is that the mechanisms for studying how language is important to conflict and its study have not been made explicit. Pearce & Littlejohn advocate attention to “the particularities of the activity” (cf. Levinson 1992) within conflicts rather than constellations of clashing variables “in some abstract world of generalized persons” (1997: xii). But they offer no methodology for exploring the nature of these ‘particularities’, how to define specific types of 'activity' or how the abovementioned ‘persons’ can be degeneralised analytically.

Within linguistics many branches of research accept the inevitability of conflict, address antagonistic communication and interaction, and explore how oppositional stances are created and maintained. One example is the field of im/politeness studies (Culpeper 2005, Bousfield 2007, O’Driscoll 2007). Another strand studies confrontational broadcast talk and the manipulation of situational norms and language resources to set up the potential for conflict (Piirainen-Marsh 2005). Chilton (2004) attempted to apply linguistic insights to the (inherently conflictual) political arena. Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1995, 2001 [1989]) has always been socially engaged and, addressing itself to the study of how hegemony, inequality and power are enacted, often has conflict in its sights.

The overall contribution to conflict studies from sociolinguistic and pragmatic scholarship so far has been relatively disparate, concentrating either on particular issues or events in order to advance theory or on particular settings in order to describe the nature of interaction within it. We wish to fuse these types of scholarship, training their insights, theories and associated modes of analysis specifically on the matter of conflict.

References

Bousfield, Derek. 2007. Impoliteness, Preference Organisation and Conducivity. Mulitlingua 26 (1-2): 1-33

Chilton, Paul A. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. Impoliteness and The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1): 35-72.

Fairclough, Norman 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Longman

Fairclough, Norman 2001. Language and Power, London: Longman (being the second revised edition of 1989)