In a new era of global conflict involving non-state actors, At War with Words offers a provocative perspective on the role of language in the genesis, conduct and consequence of mass violence. Sociolinguistics meets political science and communication studies in order to examine interdependence between armed conflict and language. As phenomena attributed only to humans, both armed conflict and language are visible on two axes: language as war discourse, and language as a social policy subject to change by the victorious. In this unique volume, internationally known contributors provide original data and new insights that illuminate roles of text and talk in creating identities of enemies, justifications for violence, and accompanying propaganda. Incorporating contexts from around the world, this collection's topics range from a radio talk show hosts' inflammatory rhetoric to the semantic poverty of the lexicon of mass destruction. The first eight chapters discuss war texts. How does language serve as a vehicle to incite, justify, and resolve an armed conflict? Case studies from the US to China, and from Austria to Ghana detail such a progression to, through, and from war. The book's second part reflects the understanding of language as a symbol of power achieved by a victorious side in war. Five chapters discuss cases from Okinawa, Croatia, Cyprus, Palau, and Northern Ireland. Edited by a sociolinguist and a political scientist, At War with Words includes chapters by Michael Billig, Paul Chilton, Ruth Wodak and a dozen other prominent linguists and communications scholars. This book will be of interest to linguists, media scholars and political scientists, but is also accessible to any reader interested in language and war. Teachers will find particular chapters useful as course material in discourse analysis, language policy, war and peace studies, conflict resolution, mass communication, and other related disciplines.

Scholars in many of the disciplines surrounding politics explicitly utilize either a narrative perspective or a metaphor perspective (though rarely the two in combination) to analyze issues -- theoretical and practical, domestic and international -- in the broad field of politics. Among the topics they have studied are: competing metaphors for the state or nation which have been coined over the centuries in diverse cultures; the frequency with which communal and international conflicts are generated, at least in part, by the clashing religious and historical narratives held by opposing groups; the cognitive short-cuts employing metaphor by which citizens make sense of politics; the need for political candidates to project a convincing self-narrative; the extent to which the metaphors used to formulate social issues determine the policies which will be developed to resolve them; the failure of narratives around the security of the nation to take account of the individual experiences of women and children. This volume is the first in which eminent scholars from disciplines as diverse as social psychology, anthropology, political theory, international relations, feminist political science, and media studies, have sought to integrate the narrative and the metaphor perspectives on politics. It will appeal to any scholar interested in the many ways in which narrative and metaphor function in combination as cognitive and rhetorical instruments in discourse around politics.

The accepted canon of war poetry usually includes only those underlining patriotic or nationalistic views. This study opens up the view of war poetry with the inclusion of such material as Nazi poetry and song, and the poetry of the atomic bomb.

Debates about the nature of literacy and literacy practices have been conducted extensively over the years. Here, the author underlines the ideological character of such debates showing their deep historical roots. She also undertakes a comparison with other major English-speaking countries, most notably Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

Paul Tripp identifies the attitudes and assumptions behind our words and shows how to develop God-honoring communication.

Scholars in many of the disciplines surrounding politics explicitly utilize either a narrative perspective or a metaphor perspective (though rarely the two in combination) to analyze issues -- theoretical and practical, domestic and international -- in the broad field of politics. Among the topics they have studied are: --competing metaphors for the state or nation which have been coined over the centuries in diverse cultures; --the frequency with which communal and international conflicts are generated, at least in part, by the clashing religious and historical narratives held by opposing groups; --the cognitive short-cuts employing metaphor by which citizens make sense of politics; --the need for political candidates to project a convincing self-narrative; --the extent to which the metaphors used to formulate social issues determine the policies which will be developed to resolve them; --the failure of narratives around the security of the nation to take account of the individual experiences of women and children. This volume is the first in which eminent scholars from disciplines as diverse as social psychology, anthropology, political theory, international relations, feminist political science, and media studies, have sought to integrate the narrative and the metaphor perspectives on politics. Michael Hanne founded the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Auckland in 1995 and directed it until 2010. William D. Crano is Oskamp Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Claremont Graduate University. Jeffery Scott Mio is the director of the M.S. in Psychology Program at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Publisher's note.