encyclopedia of violence, peace, & conflict || linguistic constructions of violence, peace, and...

Linguistic Constructions of Violence, Peace, and Conflict 1143

Moynihan, P. (1990). On the law of nations. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Pictet, J. (1951). The new Geneva conventions for the protection of warvictims. American Journal of International Law 45, 462–475.

Schindler, D. and Toman, J. (1988). The laws of armed conflict – Acollection of conventions, resolutions and other documents.Dortrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Schwarzenberger, G. (1968). From the laws of war to the laws of armedconflict. Journal of Public Law 17, 61–77.

Walzer, M. (1977). Just and unjust wars. New York: Basic Books.Weiss, P. (1977). University of Iowa College of Law. Symposium:

Nuclear weapons, the world court and global security. TransnationalLaw & Contemporary Problems 7(2), 313.

Relevant Websites

http://www.ialana.net – International Association of Lawyers

Against Nuclear Arms.

http://www.elmundo.es – El Supremo eleva a 1.084 anos decarcel la pena impuesta al ex militar argentino Scilingo,elmundo.es

http://www.globalpolicy.org – Special Tribunal for Cambodia,

Global Policy Forum.http://www.haguepeace.org – Haugue Appeal for Peace.http://www.icc-cpi.int/home.html – International Criminal

Court.http://www.icrc.org – International Committee of the Red Cross.http://www.law.cornell.edu – The Legal Information Institute

(LII), Cornell Law School.http://www.un.org – UN Department of Peacekeeping

Operations, United Nations.

http://www.un.org/icty – International Criminal Tribunal forthe Former Yugoslavia, United Nations.

http://www.sc-sl.org – The Special Court for Sierra Leone.http://69.94.11.53 – International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

LGBT Minorities, Violence Against See Sexual Minorities, Violence Against

Linguistic Constructions of Violence, Peace, and ConflictC D Mortensen, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

ª 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Linguistic Inheritance

Selective Advantages of Complex Language

Communication as Sense-Making Practice

Miscommunication

Symbolic Violence

Ethnic Conflict

Third-Party Intervention

Alternatives to Violence

Further Reading

GlossaryCommunication A process in which people interact

with symbols and signs as mechanisms of mutual

influence. Successful communication occurs insofar as

one person is able to interpret the intended meanings of

another person’s actions.

Complex Language A system of communication,

gestural, vocal, or written, based on an open and

generative lexicon of several hundred signs amenable to

meaningful combination and substitution.

Human Interaction Reality-testing activities where

elaborated forms of language use are subject to an

uneven mix of facilitative and subversive influences.

Face-to-face interactions have the greatest impact

when the vocabulary of one person can be readily

translated into the vocabulary of any other person.

Public Conflict Struggle and strife over the distribution

of scarce resources – material, economic, and symbol –

in the human world.

Symbolic Violence The symbolic anticipation or

reconstruction of violent acts are intrinsic features of

the violent actions themselves. Acts of physical

violence emerge from acts of symbolic violence and

vice versa.

Human interactions are constructed out of the real-worldconditions that surround them. The use of complex lan-

guage enables human beings to transform the cultural

inheritance and fulfill basic tasks associated with the

need for individual security and collective well-being.

Tension, strife, and strain are decisive factors in shaping

the larger potential for violence, peace, or conflict to be

altered or changed at various levels of social and cultural

1144 Linguistic Constructions of Violence, Peace, and Conflict

organization. At issue is the dynamic interplay betweenviolent acts and the linguistic or communicative atmo-sphere that surround them. In effect, the routine misuse orabuse of language contributes greatly to the question ofhow well or badly human beings treat one another on alarger scale. Consequently, conditions of violence, peace,and conflict are fully manifest both as distinctive socialachievements and as abstract objectives or universal aims.One implication is clear. If we want to make the world abetter place, we must be prepared to ‘construct’ lessviolent means of cohabitation and communication. A cen-tral task is to trace shared effort and collective movementaway from the radical disaffection implicit in acts ofphysical violence and toward their most plausible sym-bolic counterpart.

The Linguistic Inheritance

On a small scale, human interactions have unintendedconsequences and social influences with global implica-tions. On a larger scale, humans, unlike other animals,have well-developed capacities and abilities to transmitinformation, not just laterally, within generations, butvertically across generations. Intergenerational conflictis widespread and pervasive throughout the animal king-dom. Human conflict, it turns out, is simply the mostcomplicated, obdurate, and potentially liberating sourceof conflict in the entire ecosystem. What stands out aboutso much small-scale human conflict is the sheer magni-tude of what is possible.

Struggle and strife permeate human interactions indistinctive ways that are quite peculiar to the species. Itis apparent, therefore, that human beings are fully cap-able of anticipating, maintaining, and resolving a widerrange of conflicts than is any other species on the Earth.In terms of the sheer magnitude of what is possible,human beings have an enormous competitive edge thatgathers momentum over time. Evolution, after all, is aprocess in time in which possibility and potentiality areimportant factors in establishing the conditions necessaryfor future elaboration. What acquires momentum are theunique effects and outcomes that make the greatestdifference as a consequence of their total individualand collective use.

Ironically, the notion of humans having a ‘competitiveedge’ over other species linguistically points to the veryproblem that all humans share. We have the power topreserve or destroy one another, and other living crea-tures, in large part because of the enormous power oflanguage that, historically speaking, is quite a recentarrival on the human scene. Such a sweeping capacity tosolve problems on a global scale cannot be separated froman equally great potential to wreak havoc and (re)producesome of the most horrendous problems on the Earth.

Against a global backdrop of threat and insecurity, thepower of ordinary language can be seen as both curse andcure.

Questions of sustenance, security, and well-being gotogether, after all, because the human world is a materialworld and human beings are physical beings who havedevised complex modes of language use, in some mea-sure, as an expressive and communicative mechanism tofacilitate individual reproduction and to enhance the per-petuation of the human race. As a consequence, publicconflicts may be viewed as linguistic struggle and strifeover the distribution of scarce resources – material, eco-nomic, and symbolic – in the human world. Personalconflicts are designed to facilitate the redistribution orreapportionment of whatever it is that humans may lackbut nonetheless value. From a global standpoint, humanknowledge is envisioned as transmitted largely throughlocal and regional languages that remain somewhatobscure or incomprehensible to proximate neighbors oracross cultural boundaries. Historical, regional, local, con-textual, and situational differences are obviouslysignificant, therefore, in shaping the selective and strate-gic nature of the speaking environment.

Shared activities are observed for the effects theyproduce on others and are repeated thereafter for thesake of those effects. By these standards, human interac-tions are sustained in a global network of reality-testingceremonies where elaborated forms of language use aresubject to an uneven mix of ‘facilitative’ and ‘subversive’influences. All acts of observation are taken to be intrinsicaspects of the definition of the total situation. Individualactions are subject to a wide range of (re)interpretationfrom a constantly changing or shifting array of referencepoints. The question of ‘what’ gets presented by one partyis relative to ‘how’ it is to be represented by any other. Ineffect, language and culture act as twin filters to regulateand monitor emergent conceptions of individuality,separation, and the degree of relatedness of individualsto each other.

Selective Advantages of ComplexLanguage

Complex language gives prior and implicit conditions anexplicit form of mutual expression. Matters of definition,classification, and explanation involve a dynamic and sys-temic process where each expressive action is embeddedwithin a larger sequence that tends to establish new possi-bilities for further explication. Evolutionary change therebypromotes the use of activities outside the body for functionspreviously performed by the body itself. The larger processfavors the gradual transformation of individually sustainedactivities into those shared with many others. In criticalsituations the selection of those who speak is largely at the


expense of nonspeakers. What matters most is not simplythe long-term survival of the most articulate but the slowdisappearance of the most inarticulate members of society.Moreover, those who speak well acquire or derive a host ofsecondary advantages over those who speak less well. Atstake is the total magnitude of what is lost or gained at eachstep of the way.

Skillful use of complex language is highly advantageous.Differential sensitivity to slight variations in ordinary lan-guage use constitutes a basic human resource in matters tofacilitate (1) constructive thinking; (2) adaptation to chan-ging, unforeseen, adverse, or unwelcome circumstances;(3) cognitive growth; (4) the quality of life; and (5) theodds of survival. Conversely, the systemic misuse, abuse,or neglect of something at once so powerful and mysteriouscan be quite hazardous to one’s health and well-being.Complex language allows the highly skilled to sustainday-to-day interactions in ways that affect considerationsof individual well-being in the short run and collectivesurvival in the long run. This is the case not only for mattersof nourishment and sustenance but also for those affectingquestions of social status and mate selection, two majordeterminants of the ability of a speaker to reproduce atrelational and collective levels of existence.

In general, the wider the latitude of linguistic condi-tions that individuals are able to bring under a greatermeasure of volitional control, the more each party isplaced in an enhanced position to maintain close andenduring ties with other people. Burling notes that whendealing with people, not material objects, we call uponour deepest and richest expressive and communicativeresources. In matters involving personal cooperation,negotiation, competition, manipulation, and scheming toget our own way, subtle and intricate aspects of languagebecome quite involving and highly salient. When disputesgrow dangerous, we need language as an alternative toviolent forms of retribution and reprisal. Burling con-cludes that language is both a ‘collective’ resource toenrich the quality of life and a widely acknowledged‘personal’ resource to facilitate increasingly refined rela-tions and vastly more complex organization of humansociety. By implication, anything that can be a resourcefor one person may be viewed as a liability by any other.

The potential for language use to prevail over violentactions is largely mediated through the preservation andcultivation of life-affirming rituals. In this equation,humans realize the greater potential for physical violenceto erupt and strive, therefore, to civilize, appease, or tamethe larger destructive threat through the daily (re)invoca-tion of a litany of life-affirming customs, practices, andprojects. Rituals of conversation, in particular, provide amargin of open-ended and low-risk opportunity to revealor explore a rapid succession of aggressive urges andaffectionate needs simultaneously. In this way, gradualand evolutionary change greatly expands the human

capacity to love or hate in relation to who is identifiedas friend or foe or seen as located close or far away. Underfavorable conditions, the threat of murder and sacrificemay be slowly displaced or otherwise deflected by agreater measure of collective participation in sharedactions designed to transform high-risk violent urgesinto low-risk symbolic substitutes. In this way, the pro-gressively refined use of language and communication isable to take some of the sting out of the greater potentialfor outbreaks of violence. Conversely, daily rituals, pro-jects, and routines may reverse, sometimes in a regressiveway, the slant or tone of the larger enterprise. The misuseand abuse of abstract concepts and categories, for exam-ple, may transgress and violate human sensibilities to thepoint of great injury and harm.

Communication as Sense-MakingPractice

Human beings are ordinarily quite sensitive to the largerissue of what transpires when things go quite well or turnout badly. Each individual has well-developed and deeplyingrained cognitive mechanisms to identify and categor-ize what sorts of things fit well together and what types donot. A succession of high-order achievements generallyfacilitates a greater measure of appreciation of the dis-tinctive communicative value of what takes place.Favorable conditions are known to confer a broad rangeof secondary benefits. These include, among other things,greater personal sensitivity in the expenditure of scarceresources, willingness to contribute good ideas, faith inthe pursuit of personal goals as worth the cost, and espe-cially enhanced communication skills.

By these standards, unfavorable conditions include anyharsh, unsafe, degraded, unhealthy, or otherwise unsuita-ble environments for human language to multiply andflourish. Discursive practices, after all, do not spring outof thin air. A rich confluence of behavioral and environ-mental factors must surely come together in order tosecure a state of harmony and accord for all who areconcerned. Diminished resolve to tolerate a given tradi-tion of dispute or discord may weaken the wider searchfor common ground. Moreover, severe distortions inthought and feeling may become deeply ingrained inprotracted episodes of badly misinterpreted or misalignedforms of social action. An upsurge of unwanted internalinterference and external distraction add further to theoverall level of bias, static, and noise in the larger system.

Favorable circumstances are shown to benefit corematters affecting the critical evaluation of personal per-formance in various public contexts. The distinctionbetween ‘effective’ and ‘faulty’ interaction is quitedecisive. An effective way of life is associated with theall-inclusive ability to adapt to changing or unforeseen


circumstance. Matters of efficacy in self-expressionrequire the ability to construct reasonably clear defini-tions of what transpires and an inclusive sense of directionfrom one moment to the next. In sharp contrast are thoseshared actions with unclear definition (aimlessness, lackof focus) or direction (indecision). In comparative terms, arefined sense of personal clarity is useful in maintainingclose ties with others. Likewise, the absence of thesesame qualities is conducive to the formation of weakerties with others. Personal fluency registers in the ability to(1) express oneself clearly and (2) interpret othersaccurately.

Faulty or ineffective courses of action imply a markeddiscrepancy between an individual’s capacity for self-expression and subsequent evaluations of the perfor-mance in question by observers. A poor quality orlow-level performance may be taken as weak, inarticulate,or misaligned or misapplied by one observer or another.In contrast, a good or efficacious performance may beviewed as strong, explicit, articulate, well aligned, orclosely in synch (by some standard). At issue is whatdiverse types of personal actions are to be construed byothers as well functioning, whole, and integrated, or elsedismissed as fragmented, divided, and split. In sharp con-trast, acts of successful communication occur wheneverone person is able to understand the intended meanings ofanother person’s actions. In effect, the force of face-to-face interactions has the greatest value when the vocabu-lary of any one person can be readily translated intothat of any other person in the surrounding community.In the wider search for alternatives to violence, it is amatter of great consequence to be able to communicateeffectively.

Miscommunication

Nonetheless, there is a growing recognition that languageuse and communicative practice is pervasively and evenintrinsically flawed, partial, and problematic. In humanmatters, no one is infallible. The margin of differencebetween success and failure is a matter of ‘more or less’rather than ‘all or nothing’. In the moment-by-momentsequences of translation and interpretation, Grace showswhy it becomes virtually impossible to discuss subjectmatter with anyone who has not previously been awareof the existence of that subject (qua subject). Since therules of conventional language use are not identical fromone speaker to another, each language has a unique poten-tial for reality construction – each subtends a different setof potential realities.

Skilled speakers are best prepared to engage in acts ofmutual influence where the ground rules of situatedknowledge are clearly specified or well known in advance.Routine interactions take place insofar as the parties in

question are able to rely on a stable tradition of priorinteractions for tacit guidance and direction in decidingwhat to do now or next. However, when dealing withhighly unusual or uncertain circumstances, there may bea greater measure of difficulty in coping with rapidlyincreased levels of complexity, complication, and loss ofcontrol (long-term). Specific problems may pile up, oneafter another, without an equal number of solutions insight.

Problematic interactions produce complicated orunsettled questions. A problematic issue registers as anarch riding concern that does not lend itself to any appar-ent or self-evident means of articulation, course of action,or mode of resolution. The specific value of a problematicissue corresponds roughly with the total magnitude ofwhat is at issue or construed as outstanding, unresolved,unsettled, or unknown. It is, in other words, a matter ofthe collective capacity to attend to the accumulation ofunfinished discursive business. At no point is there anyassurance that communication will be certain or relativelytrouble free. By comparison, critical or urgent situationscan be quite vexing to figure out when they operate at theouter limits of personal volition and conscious awareness.Invasive actions such as rape, natural disaster, death offamily member, or serious illness threaten prior beliefsand entrenched behavioral patterns. In addition, severetrauma causes people to reconstruct belief systems anddesign alternative explanations for life-altering eventsthat are not easy to comprehend, much less explain toanyone else.

Chronic exposure to densely crowded living condi-tions is also likely to foster problematic circumstance,disrupt support networks, and cause residents to cope, inpart, by withdrawing from one another. Exposure to long-term chronic stress has insidious effects on basic levels ofaccessible social support. Terminal physical illness, recur-ring mental illness, and personal bereavement are chronicstressors that often lead to the withdrawal of affection andsupport from ailing individuals – due simply to the sheermagnitude of debt and threat of overwhelming obligation.Likewise, outbreaks of conflict and violence, by nature,cause intense forms of cognitive disorientation in how therespective victims view themselves in the context of theemotional aftermath. Social networks of violent offendersmay be disorganized and chaotic, sometimes almost as away of life. Those who observe violent actions may reactfrom a stance of emotional distance that does not permitfull appreciation of the magnitude of the total burden. Itcan be extremely difficult for victims of misuse and abuseto make clear and coherent sense of terrifying events inordinary terms that others can readily grasp and compre-hend. Disturbances in social and personal relations affectthe well-being of individuals and disrupt the preservationand conservation of communal ties. Coping skills functionbest when there is a clear sense that stressful or extreme


events are somewhat controllable when dealt withdirectly as against those viewed as mainly uncontrollableand avoided.

Problematic actions provide a rough measure of whatgoes wrong or may be valued but sorely lacking or miss-ing. Sources of misinformation multiply where multipleefforts to communicate in a public sphere are left unful-filled in more than one sense or another. A succession ofpoor-quality encounters accounts for an enormousamount of public discontent and ill will. Insofar ashuman conflict is linguistically constructed, repetitiveacts of misinterpretation and misunderstanding figureheavily in matters of conflict escalation at all levels ofsocial and cultural organization.

Basic linguistic miscalculations may interfere with thepossibility of achieving a working consensus among therespective parties. In times of confusion and commotion,there is a tendency to repeat the same types of ‘interactivemistakes’ over and over again. Matters of confused argu-ment construction further distort the meanings ofpersonal viewpoints and shifting frames of reference.People get stuck in a litany of poor performances withno way out and no better way to alter the larger para-meters of the failing system. A tradition of faulty orineffectual performances may be slowly transformed butonly at the deepest levels of personal skill and collectiveresource. Nothing is set in stone. Some measure of risknecessarily blends in with an unspecified margin ofopportunity.

Symbolic Violence

What qualifies as violent activity (praxis) is a matter ofdescription (what transpires), classification (cause, condi-tion, consequence), and explanation (rationale, polemic)for critical public scrutiny. In a broad sense, a violent actis one that violates the sensibilities of someone else.Misattribution, misinterpretation, and misunderstandingmay register in discordant or devalued terms. Divisivemodes of mutual construction may be imposed orinflicted in a disruptive, turbulent, or disquieting manner.Severe personal sentiments may be revealed (uncovered)and concealed (covered up) simultaneously, and subject,therefore, to added scrutiny, upon reflection and in antici-pation of, their (probable) short-term effects and longer(improbable) long-term consequences. Unintended infer-ences and tacit implications must be factored into thelarger equation. Intractable issues of resistance andaccommodation may interact in subtle ways with multiplesigns of discontent, disturbance, unrest, upheaval, or dis-cord in daily life.

Words and gestures may be used as aggressive weap-ons or basic means of self-defense. Notions of ‘sheerphysical violence’ are a misnomer here. Personal injuries

are never merely physical in definition or consequence.Acts of physical brutality reveal a deeper, hidden truth,namely that acts of physical violence emerge from acts ofsymbolic violence and vice versa. In this way, acts ofmurder and suicide draw tacit inspiration from the sur-rounding communicative milieu. Unlike the overtoutcomes associated with acts of physical violence, thehurtful and injurious effects of symbolic violence areoften hidden from sight – as invisible damage or invisiblewounds. Cultural violence occurs when exchange rela-tions, whether in the sphere of religion, ideology,language, or empirical science, are used to justify acts ofphysical violence. In effect, the symbolic constructions ofviolent acts are intrinsic features of the violent actionsthemselves. Likewise, violence destroys the symbolic bur-dens that come with it.

Violent actions are permeated with symbolic implica-tions and ritualistic overtones. The main themes are quitestriking. Girard contends that violence is primordial. It isintrinsic to the larger scheme of things. The contaminat-ing power of violence gives rise to the need for purifyingceremonies. Hence, there is hardly any form of violencethat cannot be described in terms of sacrifice. All socialrituals involve elements of mystery and sacrifice. A cer-tain degree of mythos and mystery is required to cover upor hide the horrific nature of violence. In this way, thethreat of physical force can be covered up, and slowlyreplaced, with substitutional or deflective actions wheremore of the weight can be born vicariously or symboli-cally. All concepts of impurity stem from communal fearsof a perpetual cycle of violence arising in its midst.Likewise, sacrifice is primarily an act of violence withoutrisk of vengeance; vengeance professes to be an act ofreprisal, and every reprisal calls for another reprisal.While the possibility of violence is not to be denied, thelarger threat may be diverted to another object. Hence,the sacrificial process fosters a certain degree of mutualmisunderstanding. People can dispense with violenceeasier somehow if they view the process as a sheer neces-sity, an utter imposition from the outside world. In thisway acts of sacrificial violence can serve as agents ofpurification – a single victim can be substituted for allpotential victims. Everyone is intent on diagnosing theillness in order to find a cure; but in fact the illness is theother – the false diagnoses and poisonous prescriptions.The problem is always the same. Violence is both thedisease (inside) and the cure (outside).

Symbolic violence may be viewed in terms of sacrificeand scapegoating. Burke describes the human condition asone of imperfect and muddled communication. We mustsolve our problems in society as best we can throughrecalcitrant and mystifying symbols that cause the pro-blems we must yet solve if we are to act together at all.Thus, symbols are both a blessing and a cure – a blessing ifwe turn our study of their use into a method for acquiring


better knowledge about the mechanisms of social control,a curse if we let their power overwhelm us until we acceptsymbolic mystification as reality. The fundamental temp-tation, cast in the manner of a misguided search for a falsecure, arises with the ability to hand over one’s ills to ascapegoat, thereby getting purification from dissociation.Burke describes scapegoating as symptomatic of over-whelming, powerful, and unrelenting stress that iscollectively directed toward and projected upon an object,person, or institution that is consensually deemed worthyof sacrifice. The key tactics are seen as a means of expiat-ing collective guilt and acquiring purification bydisassociation with the medium in order to restore orpromote social cohesion. In scapegoating one may expectto find some variation of killing in the work. In otherwords, we who victimize and are victimized by oneanother may disown or repudiate unwanted features ofour self-images by projecting our personal weaknessesand inadequacies onto another and with the resultantdischarge of collective hostility and antagonism, enhanceour internal sense of integrity.

Acts of symbolic violence are not randomly distributedbut are rather strategically located in the social fabric.Sagan claims that all societies assert, implicitly or expli-citly, that certain groups of human beings are not humanand are, therefore, legitimate objects of aggression – suchsocieties divide the human world into those who arehuman (we) and those who are subhuman – the list of‘them’ is a catalog of the oppressed, dominated, andexploited peoples of the history of the world. Mutualdisplays of affection and aggression sometimes becomeso intermixed in sacrifice that it is hard even to distin-guish the two strands. Only if a means is found to satisfyaggressive needs symbolically is it possible to give upaggressive practices – all satisfaction of aggression out-ward is an act of self-destruction. To kill another humanbeing, one must first recast the other into the status as anobject. To continue to kill that person, even after theother is dead, is to continue to deny his reality, to prolonghis status as object. Because war is inevitable only in thepsyches of those who make it so, one must not dare talk ofcourage or nerve separated from love, because withouteros courage ends up the power to kill.

Bourdieu equates symbolic violence with the power toimpose meanings and also insist on their legitimacy whileeffectively concealing the underlying dynamic of powerrelations at work. Those who are subjected to symbolic-laden implications of inferiority are placed in a difficultposition. They must struggle against the massive imposi-tion of arbitrary cultural forces by arbitrary agents ofpower in heavily weighted situations where talk andconversation all too quickly become instruments ofinstruction and incubation. Symbolic violence registers inall instructions to treat a given system of assigned mean-ings as ‘exclusively’ worthy of inclusion. All other

possibilities are ruled out in advance. Assigned meaningsreproduce and thereby legitimate dominant and subordi-nate relations into a domain of inflated but unspoken questfor privilege, status, and rank. Communication regulatedby heavily imposed instruction reproduces a system ofarbitrary subject matter that can never be seen in its fulltruth. The historical combination of the instruments ofsymbolic violence cannot be isolated from the instrumentsof concealment. Mythos and mystery regulate oppressivesystems where there are few viable alternatives and noeasy way out. One-sided claims of legitimacy reflect therelative strength of the relations between those whosematerial, economic, and symbolic interests they express.Misrecognition adds further to the legitimacy of the impo-sition. There is, in other words, considerable room fordistortion and misrecognition of the truth on all sides.

Acts of physical violence acquire a great deal of com-municative significance in the emotional aftermath. Thepublic atmosphere that surrounds highly publicized acts ofpolitical violence is quite striking as a case in point. Massmedia coverage of political violence strains the socialfabric by disrupting traditional assumptions about what itmeans to be a member of a society. Public deliberationslead to a rapid succession of short-term changes in howordinary citizens view themselves, their relations withothers, and society at large. The clash of divergent senti-ment has been found to produce an initial sense of publiccrisis followed by the emergence of a series of creative andinnovative social mechanisms to represent and redistributeelements of threat and danger throughout the fabric ofsociety. Basic structures of conflicting public sentiment,therefore, resemble, mimic, or imitate salient features ofthe act of political violence itself. Attacks on public offi-cials reveal prevailing public/cultural biases towarddisplays of hostility, aggression, conflict, violence, andmurder, and thereby bring to the surface explicit acknowl-edgment of whatever undercurrent of murderous urgesalready exist in public opinion of governmental authority.

Political displays of hostility and animus invoke theuse of ritualized, agonistic codes involving considerablecognitive anticipation and reenactment of death wishes(‘symbolic killing’) directed toward and displaced uponanother or others viewed as one would a rival, obstacle, orenemy. The possibility of killing or the thought of murderis not to be outstripped. In the work of Ibsen the notion of‘soul murder’ is defined in terms of the making use of, orexploitation, another person. The killing does not have tobe actual. It can occur symbolically, as for example in thewithdrawal of love or in the desertion of a person. It canalso be partial instead of total – a slow murder, as it were,through constant tormenting. The incremental destruc-tion of human spirit qualifies for what Otto Rank terms‘slow murder’ between intimates, lovers, and kin.

Death wishes crystallize in symbols of killing – acurious effort in symbolizing for the purpose of


destroying someone else’s method of symbolizing. Onemay envision the murder of a person or the more limiteddestruction of what the presence of the person in questionmay evoke, express, or make manifest. Symbolic killingmay assume any number of forms ranging anywhere fromactive annihilation to passive indifference. The urge tokill off what other people express or reveal constitutes aform of linguistically mediated violence that replaces atangible physical force with an intangible symbolic force.The urgency of the death wish is sustained and nurturedthrough cognitive reenactment and anticipation of themurder itself.

A mood or atmosphere of linguistic militancy occurswhere words and gestures function as ‘weapons’ in ritua-lized clashes of conflicting public opinion that signify acommunal desire for purification, atonement, and psychicprotection of the observers from threatening aspects ofsocietal events that unfold beyond their own personalcontrol. Public dialog may be viewed, then, as a vastreality-testing ceremony, one that measures the cumula-tive strength of human loyalties and the bond of politicalaffiliations. Political controversy produces massive,redressive societal mechanisms that reaffirm, test, chal-lenge, alter, or replace traditional values throughexpressive activity that provides a muted symbolic dis-play with dramatic responses that change attitudes andvalues without major and unlimited conflict, and withoutthe necessity for total involvement on the part of allmembers of society.

The notion of symbolic killing calls attention to thedestructive consequences of abusive, neglectful, or misap-plied forms of shared action. A collective representation ofcentral tendencies is as follows: (1) early developmentaldamage and prolonged separation from love objects andcaretakers; (2) generational poverty, deprivation, and col-lective devaluation; (3) unresolved hatred over atrocitiesagainst one’s own kin; (4) abuse or neglect with no end insight; (5) lack of access to scarce resources; and (6) legacyof largely unfulfilled possibilities – a sense of worthless-ness and despair.

Ethnic Conflict

Ethnicity provides a strategic measure of personal iden-tity and strength of communal affiliation. In severe ethnicconflicts, a host of self-serving devices may be used todiminish greater appreciation for the standards, values,beliefs, and customs of what takes place with other people,as in the use of foreign currency or exposure to alienterritory. Linguistic tensions tend to cluster around per-iods of undue or prolonged exposure to information orsituations that have been very troubling or unsettling inthe past. When the language systems of competing ethnic

groups are pitted against one another, three broad types ofcognitive distortion are at issue.

Ideological bias occurs whenever a particular way oflooking at the world is closed to further inspection fromthe outside world. A personal ideology can be used tocreate public justification for the privileges and perks ofcertain groups or institutions in prevailing social arrange-ments. Inflated or justificational use of language, whetherdesigned to expand the scope of privilege and preogra-tive, or to strengthen collective resolve to obtain a greatershare of resources, protects the vested interest and hiddenagenda of those in charge of established norms and rules.Moreover, personal ideology can be used as a vision to beimposed on others as a matter of whim. The massiveimposition is coercive and defensive in aspiration. It fos-ters a heavily slanted and stylized version that toleratesexisting inequities and remains indifferent to the depriva-tion and suffering of others.

Ethnocentric bias arises with the inclination to see one’sown group, kin, or tribe to be the center of everything inrelation to the wider scheme of things. At issue is a widertendency to be unaware of the biases due to one’s ownmakeup and to judge and interact with others on the basisof those unspoken premises. The matter may be viewed interms of the sheer magnitude of exaggeration in matters ofdeference (praise) toward insiders and suspicion (blame)toward outsiders. Double standards abound. Therefore, thefine line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is subject to the force ofself-monitored bias up and down the line. Distortion resultsfrom biased forms of misclassification and false or mythicalcategorization of competing reference groups.

Egocentric bias becomes a factor when one personmakes assumptions, or forms expectations, associatedwith self-enhancing estimates of the degree to whichothers think, feel, or act as oneself. Alternative possibili-ties are easier to discount or rule out. Those who arethreatened by difficult life conditions are particularlysusceptible to exposure to abusive language based onconcerted efforts at devaluation. It is difficult to accountfor all the harm and damage that occurs from the massiveimposition of diverse and divergent ways of thinkingabout the world.

Ethnic conflict registers in the labels, categories, clas-sifications, and stereotypes used to establish or denyaccess across social and cultural boundaries. Abusive lan-guage figures prominently in collective efforts to express,reinforce, undermine, or redress rank orders along pre-vailing ethnic lines. Nicknames used as epithets constrainthose who use them. Name calling provides a blank checkfor characterizing out-groups as worthy or deserving of aconstant outpouring of verbal abuse as a means to neu-tralize their efforts to gain status or acquire influence. Forthose in control, name calling justifies inequality andprejudice and tolerates invidious ethnic comparisons inpublic settings. Minority protests against oppressive labels


become stylized and highly rhetorical whenever counter-labels are used to neutralize or subvert the prevailingvocabulary of a local community. Ethnic slurs, particu-larly in jokes and humor, have one main goal – toneutralize and thwart outsiders. As language contactbetween competing groups becomes more prominent,multifaceted, sustained, or troubled, the magnitude ofverbal abuse intensifies and more varied derogatory ter-minology is coined and used.

Interethnic disturbances are subject to collective (rea-lity) test based on a discordant class of personal standardsregarding who is deemed worthy of inclusion (close by) orexclusion (far away) from common participation in somewider cause. An inclusive membership in a bonded kin-ship relation invites credible, affirmative participation.Conversely, exclusion from fellow kinship membersinvokes signs of discredited modes of disqualification,devaluation, and disaffirmation of those dismissed asexpendable commodities or mere objects of collectivemanipulation, calculation, or exploitation. Individualswho occupy (elevated) positions and places of (ascendant)rank in a highly stratified social hierarchy (inner circle)may remain partially oblivious of the inferior welfare ofdisplaced or disadvantaged individuals who are segre-gated and subordinated as mere occupiers of the outerfringe, the border, the periphery of civil affiliation.Human inequality is reproduced in pervasive social struc-tures and massive institutional affiliations that are (rule/resource) governed by a widely disproportionate distri-bution of all available communal resources, favoringsome, while diminishing others. Majority attitudes pro-vide a litmus test of minority rights.

Common insistence may be used, enforced, or sanc-tioned, to further misconstrue, misrepresent, understate,or minimize the sheer magnitude of adversity, depriva-tion, crisis, or needless pain and suffering that occurs.Multiple markers of (questionable) individuality and(unsettled) conceptions of social and personal identityprovide rough estimates and leading indicators of separa-tion, banishment, or ex-communication from somerevered or honored cite, ritual, or place of habitation.Linguistic factors figure heavily in the problems and thepromises derived from active engagement in all manner ofpersonal, relational, institutional, and collective violence,whether directed at another human being, other livingcreatures, or the ecological landscape. Ethnic conflictdoes not necessarily lead to greater ethnic violence, unlessa critical ethnic claim (of grievance) is shown to cross over(violate) some devoutly honored cultural boundary orsacred cultural value.

Hostile interactions among identity groups maybecome chronic or protracted, based on deep-seatedhatred, long-standing grievance, or denial of basic needs.As Fisher indicates, standard or routine approaches dealwith surface issues but are quite powerless to address

nonnegotiable issues ‘‘in part because of a host of social-psychological processes, including cognitive rigidities anddistortions, self-fulfilling prophecies, and irrational com-mitment mechanisms’’ with interlocking conditions whereno one issue can be resolved in itself but is part of a largersequence where ‘‘the process itself becomes a majorsource of contriving conflict’’. One objective is to marshalsmall-scale support and large-scale resources to enableespecially disadvantaged groups to preserve and solidifythe necessary linguistic skills to revitalize local culturalidentities and neutralize political oppression. Here peaceis measured as collective tolerance of small-scale disorder.

Third-Party Intervention

Faulty interaction is not always self-correcting. Severe lin-guistic difficulties may become intractable or impenetrableover time. The sheer perpetuation of poor-quality perfor-mance raises the possibility or need for third-partyintervention. The initial goal of mediation or arbitration isto improve the quality of interaction by reducing the severityof discord or dispute. This is not always possible, particularlyif the adversaries have reached a hurting stalemate. The useof tough tactics – an unwillingness to compromise – maysabotage the possibility for ‘any’ type of resolution. If eachparty insists on holding out, an impasse can be expected.Mediators may attempt to strike a power balance, expandthe agenda, explore agreements that yield high benefits toboth sides, determine what points are negotiable, reframe thedispute, exert pressure on second and third parties, and fine-tune strategies and tactics that work out well. On a largerscale, international mediators are required to facilitate com-munication, formulate strategies, and manipulate the courseof decision making.

Flexibility is crucial. Rigid and tough bargaining stra-tegies operate in hostile climates with a wide convergenceof different interests and distinct personal concerns.Individual flexibility requires the willingness to forfeitgains in order to avoid further losses or a deadlock.Coercive tactics may be used to move one party off aposition, onto a new position, or help to save face.However, successful settlements are difficult to brokerwhen one or both parties have few resources or weaklinguistic skills. Resource scarcity and power imbalancetend to reduce the total range of options. Also resistant tochange is discord and dispute over principles and non-divisible issues. Low levels of verbal interaction generallymake matters worse.

The ability to compromise is also decisive. In an ana-lysis of bargaining experiments reported over a 25-yearperiod, Druckman found that the strongest effect sizeswere obtained for the mediator’s own orientation, priorexperience, time pressures, and initial distance betweenpositions. Most resistant to change are social conditions


where (1) the participants do not expect future interac-tion; (2) few issues are contested and a deadline exists;(3) competitive orientations are long-standing or whereface-saving pressures are strong; (4) ‘differences betweenpositions’ on important issues are derived from long-heldattitudes or linked to ‘contrasting ideologies’; and(5) when faced with ‘tough’ or ‘explotive’ opponentswhose intentions are easy to discern. In effect, the entiresweep of conflict and dispute must be taken into accountduring the initial review of what is possible or ruled out.

Conflict and criticism are closely associated.Destructive forms of verbal criticism are known to pro-mote anger, tension, and further resolve to handle futuredisputes with methods of resistance and avoidance ratherthan collaboration and compromise. Harsh or recriminat-ing forms of verbal criticism gradually lower expectationsof performance and self-efficacy. Poor criticism, in effect,promotes an atmosphere of conflict and confusion on allsides. Main targets are severely deficient or frequentlymisused aspects of personality with disproportionateblame and guilt induction over what goes wrong. Theclash of discordant verbal sentiment – a heavy stockpile ofclaim weighted against counterclaim – may exhibit aconstant recycling of stress and strain with heavy relianceon the same kinds of moves and tactics in successive turnsof spirited talk during heated conversation. Mutual reg-ulation of escalative tendencies by recycled maneuvershelps to even out, dilute, and attenuate the duration orseverity of the verbal conflict at hand.

It is useful to think of the intensity of personal disputes inrelation to the magnitude of what is at stake. Potential issuescluster around whatever humans value but find lacking,scarce, or uneven in matters of production, access, or supply.Grimshaw organizes personal issues around several basicconsiderations. Attention is focused on substantive ‘issues’seen as ‘causes’ for participants’ motivations. Conflict talkinvolves (restricted or elaborated) negotiation over personalidentities, that is, what kinds of persons and what states ofrelations should come into play. At issue is the precisealignment of argumentative skills, complex negotiation ofmultiple identities, and muted instruction about the norma-tive properties of talk. Much depends on the total stakes atwork in an evolving context of mixed motives. What iscrucial is whether the respective parties see themselves asspeaking for themselves or for others. Verbal controversy hasthe potential to ‘expand’ in focus, or ‘spread’ along preexist-ing boundaries of classes, categories, groups, friendships, andinstitutional affiliation.

Alternatives to Violence

Acts of nonviolence provide plausible linguistic substi-tutes for the threat of violent actions themselves. Thesymbolic resources that humans employ to threaten,

injure, or thwart others may be altered, either by designor application, to neutralize, deflect, or dissipate the riskof violent action. Peace-making efforts involve a doublesubstitution. At one level is the shared effort to findalternatives to the use of physical coercion or force. Atanother is the common struggle to devise the means andthe methods of improved communication as a goal with-out inflicting further harm and injury. An underlyingpresumption is the possibility of mutual engagement inconstructive change. Fatalism is the enemy of construc-tive change. Static or faulty conditions may bereproduced in the manner of a bad habit or poorly exe-cuted routine. In matters of acquired deficiency or trainedincompetence, the focal points of subject matter maychange rapidly while the basic misconstructive processesremain much the same. Fatalism implies bargaining in badfaith, as when people get stuck in a long succession ofpoor performances with no way out and no (better) way toalter (the failing system). As a corrective, there must besome measure of faith in the larger possibility of changingthe patterns of interaction that interfere with the gradualacquisition of more favorable or productive aspirations.The measure of required change may involve an incre-mental or stepwise gain or else it may assume a moresweeping and inclusive form – affecting the character,conditions, and context of interaction.

What qualifies as questionable or problematic does nothave to be taken as absolute or inherent in the greaterscheme of things but is dependent rather on the particularmix of circumstance and behavior. It is useful to think ofthe requirements for movement away from the threatof violence or intractable conflict in terms of a series ofsmall-scale changes in personal outlook and responsive-ness to others. A measure of persistence refers to small-scale change (one state to another) within the same basiclevel or type of shared activity. Transformation, in con-trast, refers to a far more dramatic or sudden shift, a jump,out of a faulty system (all-or-nothing).

Tolerance of change acquires definition from the pointof greatest resistance. The lower threshold is a state ofsheer intolerance toward any type of change in the tra-jectory of a course of action. One may decide to cling to aset of ‘static conditions’, whether taken as mainly harmo-nious, contentious, or volatile. A point of small departureis manifest in the willingness to tolerate an ‘incremental’or momentary change (one thing or another) but only fora specified period of time. Willingness to settle for asuccession of slight or modest improvements may wellleave the larger picture in tact. Slight change may be onlybegrudgingly accepted. ‘Episodic’ change is due to a seriesof minor adjustments and accommodations to the forces ofrisk and change at work. ‘Generalized’ change registers asa major shift in the definition or state of human relationsduring (1) some critical, urgent, or decisive period or elsein (2) one’s way of dealing with other people in general.


More highly visible is a state of extensive change wherethe total impact of events is so dramatic and elaborated, atotal break from the past. It may be even possible toenvision a ‘radical’ change in some salient mode of publicconduct. A vision of ‘transformational’ change enablessomeone to behave in a whole new way, as in a quest fora new way of life.

Mutual resolution of unfinished business opens up alarger array of possibilities. After all, a litany of global,regional, and local conceptions of peace, conflict, andviolence are manifest as quite visible and highly distinc-tive conditions in the human world. We may speak of apeaceful, conflicted, or violent way of life almost anyplace on the Earth. Therefore, each major type ofhuman activity fully qualifies as a linguistic constructionof significant achievement. At issue are basic relationsbetween language users, specific instances of languageuse, and matters affecting issues of individual securityand collective well-being. Of greatest concern is whetherthe unforeseen consequences of all the stress and strainserve to undermine the prospect of future interaction.What hangs in the balance is a legacy of threat andsupport with only limited potential for movement on allsides. Short-term effects and long-term outcomes aresubject to (micro) management and (macro) maintenanceof shared circumstance.

Ordinary language is a basic mechanism of repair inhuman relations. Acts of compensation and appeasement(face-saving) may enable or allow old wounds to heal andprevent new ones from occurring. Certain types of violentaction may be deflected or diverted into less intense formsof symbolic struggle. The rhetorical principles of imita-tion, substitution, conversion, or partial replication may bedesigned to direct or deflect public attention elsewhere. Inthis way the efficacious use of complex language invokes aspirit of accommodation, renewal, or rebirth.

Repair mechanisms are designed to open up greaterinsight and promote better understanding of troubled,taxing, contested, or divisive modes of social encounter.Restorative acts involve strategic decisions and tacticalmaneuvers of overlooking, leveling, averaging, discount-ing, minimizing, or ignoring adverse effects of multipleslights, complaints, criticisms, and grievances takentogether with a corresponding release of anger, resent-ment, along with dampened or tempered control ofretaliatory or vindictive urges. It may well take consider-able effort to replace regressive, subversive, antagonistic,or malevolent counter measures with a more realistic andintegrative view that transforms, inverts, reinterprets, or(re)calibrates both good (desirable) and bad (undesirable)aspects of severely contested modes of disagreement,misunderstanding, and problematic talk. Negativerestoration entails the pent-up release of disaffectedthought, feeling, and action. Positive restoration involvesdeliberate effort to forestall, delay, or prevent the

perpetration of offensive violations or major transgres-sions on unwilling, unwelcome, or resistant subjects.

Remedial tactics and compensatory strategies may behidden underneath a wide away of surface denials andheuristic rationalizations for harmful intent. There mayalso be subtle indicators of tacit striving and unspokenurge to dilute or diminish the scope, scale, or salience ofexplicit personal responsibility for adverse outcomes.Personal excuses shift common focus and shared attentionaway from the actual causes and viable reasons for pro-blematic events or bad news to pile up unresolved overextensive time frames. Repeated excuses provide low-riskmethods of coping with misguided intention, faulty per-formance, disappointing outcome, and corrective devicesthat make the respective parties feel better after the fact.Tactics of exoneration appeal to mitigating circum-stances. Blame, criticism, or pointed attack may bedeflected to divert attention away from firm acknowl-edgment of personal accountability by taking the easyway out: pointing fingers, rationalizing, denying, stone-walling, filling the air with empty words, or reliance onother expedient means of distorted reality.

The constructive use of reformative counter tacticsmay require concerted effort and great struggle to pro-mote an integrative spirit of reciprocal adaptation,adjustment, and accommodation, whereby troublingaffairs can be brought into sharp focus, made sense of,and then discussed by a plurality of subjects. The abilityto reframe critical, pressing, vexing, or problematic cir-cumstance may open up an added way to diminish theseverity of destructive effects and thereby reduce biasedor distorted estimates of others’ collective responsibilityfor alleged infractions. Restoration of damaged relationsrequires abstinence from the countervailing forces ofvengeance and retribution, both of which thrive on jea-lousy and steadfast refusal to forgive or reconsiderprolonged enforcement of punitive verdicts. Likewise,critical aspects of communicative difficulty may also besubject to selective recasting, whereby extreme interpre-tations, based on absolute thinking and polarized sociallabels, are revised to appear somewhat more normal,mundane, or ordinary. Harsh assessments may be diluted,downgraded, or distanced as a means to deny or disavowpreviously held contentions. Compensatory effort may bedesigned to calm things down, ease tensions, or make thebest of a bad situation.

Constructive acts of reframing, reformulating, andreconstructing divisive events are likely to occur eachtime a victim ceases being resentment and stops makingnegative judgments toward a transgressor. Acts of recon-ciliation take opposing valuations, and reform orreconstitute them (collectively) into something new andmore worthy of emulation. The credibility of a formalapology coincides with the magnitude of sympathy for theoffender. Rituals of apology or pardon may serve to


validate the injured parties’ feelings, intuitions, percep-tions, and sensibilities. Acts of forgiveness entail valueddecisions to forego retribution for injurious conduct andrelinquish claims of restitution. Unspoken restoration iscommonplace in restorative efforts to overcome theimpact of hurt and harm.

From a third-party perspective, the restoration orrenewal of optimum conditions for speaking subjectsrepresents a distinctive high-order linguistic achieve-ment. Constructive change involves at minimum thecourage to resist whatever would hold a person backfrom shared participation in communal efforts to fulfillthe potentiality of shared moments rather than let thembe misused, abused, or merely wasted. Successful com-munication is shown to be an individual and collectiveachievement, accomplished through compromise andmutual accommodation, rather than merely taken forgranted as an entitlement of possibility. In such an intri-cate and fragile domain, favorable conditions revolvearound the compatibility of individual interests with com-munal involvements in sustained and systematicsequences of interaction in which the effective use ofpersonal resources leads to the maximum fulfillment ofmutual possibilities.

Obtainable standards are reached each time thathuman beings are shown to be capable and willing todeal with intractable or problematic concerns in a mannerthat takes into account (1) the safety and security of eachmember; (2) the intrinsic worth of mutual exploration;(3) the stance of receptivity toward future interaction;(4) the courage to say and do whatever is required whilethere is still a margin of opportunity; and (5) a willingnessto promote a more inclusive spirit of world openness.Most decisive is whether the activity in question is suffi-ciently open to inspection to enable each party to call intoquestion the physical and material well-being of oneanother. At issue is any sense of deprivation that leavescertain individuals feeling unsafe and insecure in theirrespective dealings with one another.

Perhaps there should be greater provision in the commu-nal landscape for skilled and well-trained linguists who actmainly on behalf of those who cannot or are not in a goodposition to speak out on their own behalf. Favorable condi-tions provide alternative methods to translate the implicit,unspoken urges of self and others into a salient and contem-porary idiom. In other words, those who are most fluent andarticulate give expression to the issues and concerns of thosewho lack the ability or resolve to represent their own striv-ings and concerns in the best possible light. A secure sense ofcollective achievement implies that no one is solely at themercy of his or her own linguistic devices. Individual mem-bers are in a position to speak to, with, against, and throughunfinished, urgent, or compelling business. Such displays ofsupportive communication have the potential to become avital human resource. Hence, individuals must be able to

maintain direct access to a wide circle of second and thirdparties for care and assistance in dealing with stressfuldemands and difficult or questionable behaviors. Routineexchange is predicated on the presumption of mutual help-fulness to sustain someone in a goal or cause in the context ofpersonal appraisals of the use (or misuse) of collectiveresources. Support is on the side of a greater measure ofhuman resources to be reproduced on a regular basis. Acentral goal is to preserve and protect the material, economic,and symbolic resources that people already value.

Linguistic support can be a major source of socialstability through changing times. Affordable circumstanceinclude: benefits derived from secure connections, satis-faction that is moderately stable, ability to maintain cross-situational consistency in the average level of successduring daily contacts with others, and mutual toleranceof difficulties when those close connections are lacking,ambiguous, or insecure. Complex forms of social comfortare associated with (1) a greater degree of involvementwith distressed others and their difficulties; (2) neutralforms of personal evaluation; (3) awareness and sensitivityto stressful feelings; (4) acceptance and validation of theother’s distress; and (5) explanations for the urgency ofanother’s condition. Supportive persons provide valuablebut intangible resources – warmth, reassurance, help,assistance, and aid for troubled times. The degree ofsuccess increases the willingness to deal with signs ofdistress in more complexity and greater detail.

Global conceptions of support help shape one’s senseof being worthy of help and assistance from others.Availability of support includes a general sense of nour-ishment plus specific orientations about significant othersas caregivers. There is growing recognition that suppor-tive actions are powerful forces in solving problems,forming amicable and productive work relations, sustain-ing close and enduring relations, promoting a healthyform of family life, and serving as global measures ofcompetence. At stake is the willingness to understandthe full range of adaptations and methods for circumvent-ing limits. Progressive movement involves a journey toreawaken individual vision and collective resolve.

See also: Communication Studies, Overview; Conflict

Transformation; Enemy, Concept and Identity of; Ethnic

Conflicts and Cooperation; Interpersonal Conflict, History

of; Language of War and Peace, The; Mass Media,

General View; Ritual and Symbolic Behavior

Further Reading

Allen, I. L. (1983). The language of ethnic conflict. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.

Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. C. (1977). Reproduction in education,society and culture (Nice, R., trans.). Beverely Hills, CA: Sage.

1154 Long-Term Effects of War on Children

Burleson, B. R., Albrecht, T. J., and Sarason, L. G. (1994).Communication of social support: Messages, interactions,relationships, and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Burling, R. (1986). The selective advantage of complex language.Ethology and Sociobiology 7, 1–16.

Druckman, D. (1994). Determinants of compromising behavior innegotiation. Journal of Conflict Resolution 37, 236–276.

Fisher, R. J. (1993). The potential for peacebuilding: Forging a bridge frompeacekeeping to peacemaking. Peace and Change 18, 247–266.

Galtung, J. (1990). Cultural violence. Journal of Peace Research27, 291–305.

Girard, R. (1977). Violence and the sacred, Gregory, P. (trans.).Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Grace, G. W. (1987). The linguistic construction of reality. London:Croom Helms.

Grimshaw, A. D. (1990). Research on conflict talk: Antecedents,resources, findings, directions. In Graimshaw, A. D. (ed.) Conflict talk:Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations,pp. 280–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mortensen, C. D. (1987). Violence and communication: Public reactionsto an attempted presidential assassination. Landover, MD: UniversityPress of America.

Mortensen, C. D. (1991). Communication, conflict, and culture.Communication Theory 1, 273–291.

Mortensen, C. D. (1994). Problematic communication: The constructionof invisible walls. Westport, CN: Praeger.

Mortensen, C. D. (1997). Miscommunication. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.

Mortensen, C. D. (2006). Human conflict: Disagreement,misunderstanding, and problematic talk. Boulder, CO: Rowman &Littlefield.

Parks, C. D. and Vu, A. D. (1994). Social dilemma behavior of individualsfrom highly individualist and collectivist cultures. Journal of ConflictResolution 38, 708–718.

Sagan, E. (1979). The lust to annihilate. New York: The PsychohistoryPress.

Wenden, A. L. (2003). Achieving a comprehensive peace: The linguisticfactor. Peace and Change 28, 169–201.

Logic and Violence See Reason and Violence

Long-Term Effects of War on ChildrenJames Garbarino and Lauren Zurenda, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Joseph A Vorrasi, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

ª 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Beyond the Body Count

The Concept of Trauma

Social Maps

Cumulative Risk Model

Predicting War’s Long-Term Effects on Children

Conclusion

Further Reading

Introduction: Beyond the Body Count

‘Childhood’ is a cultural creation with important devel-opmental payoffs. Childhood offers a protected context inwhich young people can focus on developing competencethrough play. Many developmentalists see the social crea-tion of ‘a long childhood’ as being a key to human culturalevolution – one of the keys to enhanced civilization.However, neither this process nor this context is auto-matic. When adult economic, sexual, and political forcespreempt childhood, children lose the opportunity to fullyexperience the role of child. Unfortunately, this loss is afrequent casualty of war that is not included in the bodycount.

This article seeks to provide a perspective on thelong-term psychological effects of war on children. It isfounded in an ecological perspective on child

development (in the tradition of Urie Bronfenbrenner)that emphasizes ‘development in context’ (as defined bybiological and social factors). This perspective is cap-tured in the view that when the question is, ‘‘Does Xcause Y?’’ the best scientific answer is generally, ‘‘Itdepends.’’ It depends upon context. One implication ofthis perspective is the need to ‘map’ the accumulationof risk factors and developmental assets in a child’s lifeas a prerequisite for assessing the course of individualdevelopment; rarely, if ever, does a single risk factor ordevelopmental asset determine developmental trajec-tory. We bring this model to the study of how waraffects the psychological development of children.

Conventional thinking about warfare tends to focus onquantitative measures (e.g., casualty rates). For instance,in their efforts to subdue the rebels in Afghanistan, Sovietforces lost 15 000 of their own troops. Through bombing,

encyclopedia of violence, peace, & conflict || linguistic constructions of violence, peace, and...

Documents