Language, Violent and Peaceful Uses of

Abstract

The importance of language and its effects for preserving or damaging peace has been acknowledged in psychology and other disciplines for a long time. However, there has been little attention to the problem from a linguistic perspective because language is often taken for granted — more or less in the same way as the air we breathe is taken for granted. We all know by experience what violent and peaceful uses of language look like, and we also know that in the private space (and in some public spaces too) words may be accompanied with gestures, screaming, yelling, and more intense bodily actions such as throwing things, kicking, bumping, breaking objects, etc. We have been warned that verbal violence often leads to physical violence and, perhaps, death. However, our interest is to call attention to the fact that language is above all a social practice in which we all participate with rights and duties and that, as speakers of a language, we are responsible for choosing the words and acts of discourse that may either mitigate or intensify conflicts and promote peaceful dialogue or not.)

Word differences in news media of lower and higher peace countries revealed by natural language processing and machine learning

“…Linguistic features of peace and conflict can be found in all aspects of language including in phonology, grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse [ 17 ]. This leads us to ask, what are the properties of “peace speech” that are the other face of the coin from “hate speech”?…”