Language and Conflict: Selected Issues

Description

What role does language and communication play in conflict? Why do people engage in or get drawn into quarrels? How can our awareness of the social rules of language use prevent disputes? In this illuminating and accessible guide, Karol Janicki takes the reader on a tour through the field of conflict in language. Using real-life examples, the book examines how language usage influences conflict, and what people can do to avoid or resolve it. Language and Conflict - Ends each chapter with a story that neatly summarizes the key discussion points in a clear, digestible format - Provides useful 'hands-on' tips and further reading recommendations for those who want to explore the subject further. This book is ideal reading for undergraduates studying discourse analysis, language and communication, sociolinguistics, or applied linguistics, and for general readers new to the subject of language and conflict.

Karol Janicki is a Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen, Norway

Janicki's text covers a lot of areas of inquiry, from cognitive linguistics to political communication and from pragmatics to psychology and philosophy of language. The discussion is lucid, thought-provoking and reader-friendly. Anyone seeking to have a deep understanding of those extraordinary aspects of ordinary language would find this book inviting and revealing. Those new to the field of language studies will give the book a big thumbs up for its clear explanations of thick theories supported by numerous real-life examples. * Chaoqun Xie, Discourse Studies, Vol. 19 (2) * Each of the volume's eight chapters contains a real story ... that works as a meaningful and tangible illustration of the key concepts, followed by a section entitled 'Summary and practical advice' ... Recommendable as an introductory text for students in linguistics and communication, also scholars of linguistics and nonspecialists will certainly find it a valuable reading. Its attentive consideration of significant aspects involving language use and the appearance/avoidance of conflicts makes this work really compelling and thought-provoking. * Beatriz Christino, Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol. 10 (1-2) *