This volume examines specific contexts around the world in which discourse operates in the service of war or to build alternative visions of peace. Contributors, who have backgrounds in linguistics, anthropology, rhetoric, and communication studies, draw upon discourse analytic and ethnographic methods to examine the discourse used by politicians and social actors in societies across the globe, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Ireland, the Palestinian territories, and Japan. The book is divided into four sections that foreground the political effects of discourse on issues of war and peace, including the way discourse is harnessed to justify war (part I), negotiate military deployment (part II), respond to armed conflict (part III), and promote peace (part IV).

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. War, Discourse, and Peace - Adam Hodges

PART I - JUSTIFYING WAR

2. 'New World Coming': Narratives of the Future in U.S. Post-Cold War National Security Discourse - Patricia Dunmire

3. The Generic U.S. Presidential War Narrative: Justifying Military Force and Imagining the Nation - Adam Hodges

4. The Discursive Battlefield of the "War on Terror": Enabling Strategies for Garnering Public Support in the Rhetoric of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden - Anna Podvornaia

5. World of the Impolitic: A Critical Study of the British WMD Dossier - Aditi Bhatia

PART II - NEGOTIATING MILITARY DEPLOYMENT

6. Culture Clash: Framing Peacekeeping and its Role in a Canadian Context - Janis Goldie

7. Promising without Speaking: Military Realignment and Political Promising in Japan - Chad Nilep

PART III - RESPONDING TO ARMED CONFLICT

8. "Everyone Has Their Particular Part to Play": Commensuration in the Northern Irish and Palestinian Victims' Rights Movements - Candler Hallman

9. Reasonable Affects: Moroccan Family Responses to Mediated Violence - Becky Schulthies

Part IV. Promoting Peace

10. Performing Peace: The Framing of Silence in a Quaker Vigil - Anna Marie Trester

11. Narrating War and Peace at Battle Ruins: Okinawan Tourism-Activism Discourses - Taku Suzuki

Index