Elise Boulding's Rhetoric: An Invitation to Peace

Abstract

Elise Boulding has been an important voice in the American peace movement. In this paper, I examine Boulding's speeches with the goal of continuing the critique of peace rhetors toward the discovery of a peace rhetoric theory. The implications are clear that when there is a potential for conflict and war, the critique of rhetorical strategies used can lead to a better understanding of how people can learn to live peacefully with one another. Sonja J. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin's invitational rhetoric is a useful starting point to highlight some important features of Boulding's rhetoric.And finally, we need imagination to create in our minds a peaceably adventurous, challenging, complex, fun society. I get very uneasy with the talk about futures because it sounds so dull. A conflict-free future, who wants it? Kenneth and I wouldn't want it; then we couldn't have all those wonderful conflicts that we have had. The twenty-first century has to be something we want. If it doesn't look good to us, it won't empower us for action in the present.-Elise Boulding 1While trying to develop a comprehensive peace discourse theory, I have been researching and writing about the rhetoric of peace for some time. My aim has been to discover common rhetorical frames, metaphors, symbols, linguistic strategies, or verbal paradigms that may be consistently employed by those advocating a shift in social attitudes about violence prevention. My search for a common structure by which speech acts become effective means of violence prevention has included forays into viewing the seeds of global conflict as related to the contention arising out of a dysfunctional interpersonal relationship, aggressors attacking too well-known others out of a need to have the seemingly mutually exclusive relational states of autonomy and connectedness.