PEACE LINGUISTICS: IMPERATIVES FOR ESCAPING FRICTION AND PEACEBUILDING IN SOCIAL INTERACTION.

Abstract

Peace seems to have become humanity’s most sought after desire and value in our dispensation given its elusive nature. Friction, conflict and chaos have continued to have their toll on humanity. This trend has been fueled by the acts of individuals, even the verbal/ language acts, which have increasingly become violent. In social interactions today, language is often marked with disharmony and communicative violence evident in the use of aggressive, offensive and dehumanizing constructions that have the potentiality to harm and, by extension, escalate friction and conflict. It is in line with the foregoing that this paper examined peace linguistics’ imperative for escaping friction and building peace. Peace linguistics advocates for the prevention of communicative aggression, creation of harmony and promotion of peace using language principles and applications. The study adopted the cooperative principles of Grice (1957) and Culpeper’s (1996) model of impoliteness as working frameworks. The researcher also hinged the study on corpus linguistic approach as data were sourced from social media interactions and used to investigate how language can deconstruct and how it can construct and foster peace. The paper identified that since communication and language [its vehicle] are what human life revolves around, language could, thus, be used to champion peace building when it is used constructively and made to possess human dignifying attributes. The paper posited that the tenets of peace linguistics which include effective use of language, harmonious exchange, humanized constructions and communicative peace should be adopted in social interactions. Recommendations were made on the need to escape friction, prevent conflict and strengthen peace through humanizing language performances.