Discourses of War and Peace

Given the prevalence of war around the world, it is vital to understand the way discourse contributes to the promotion and positioning of war as a natural or inevitable response to international problems. In addition, it is equally necessary to examine the way discourse impacts projects of peace, which seek to displace discourses of war with alternative visions of the world. This volume examines specific contexts around the world in which discourse operates in the service of war or to build alternative visions of peace. Contributors, who have backgrounds in linguistics, anthropology, rhetoric, and communication studies, draw upon discourse analytic and ethnographic methods to examine the discourse used by politicians and social actors in societies across the globe, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Ireland, the Palestinian territories, and Japan. The book is divided into four sections that foreground the political effects of discourse on issues of war and peace, including the way discourse is harnessed to justify war (part I), negotiate military deployment (part II), respond to armed conflict (part III), and promote peace (part IV).