Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

Background on the Language, Conflict and Peacebuilding (LCP) Initiative

At this time in our country and the larger global community, many of us are struggling to find ways to talk to each other about conflicts, whether they are occurring in the United States or abroad.  As a result, our conversations often leave us polarized and divided, while doing little or nothing to help resolve the critical issues at the heart of those conflicts.

In 2024 the LSA Executive Committee launched the Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (LCP) initiative, whose aim is to highlight, organize, and engage the insights, tools, and empirical findings of linguistics to illuminate how language can be used to provoke conflict and drive polarization, or to foster peacebuilding.

Guiding Principle

A key guiding principle for the initiative was to frame the work in the context of language, power, conflict, and peacebuilding broadly speaking, rather than focusing on one conflict to the exclusion of others. Thus, projects under the LCP Initiative should illuminate the ways in which linguistics, as a scientific discipline, can help us understand the role of language in conflict and peace-building, drawing on multiple examples across time and space.
 

Progress on the LCP Initiative

(Last updated 1/29/2026)
 

February 2026. LSA Receives American Council of Learned Societies Grant

The LSA receives a small grant from the American Council of Learned Societies in support of a three-day writing workshop for 15 participants to be held at the University of Washington June 4-6, 2026. The three-day workshop will bring together eligible junior and early-career linguists, workshop leaders, and members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (LCP), who during the workshop will collaborate in developing ‘chapter seeds’ (defined as 2-3 pages with an abstract, outline, key sources, and a timeline) for a co-edited volume that will be published by deGruyter/Brill. Over the 12-18 months following the workshop, participants will be provided structured support through virtual cohort meetings and writing sessions to facilitate the completion of their chapters in time for possible inclusion in the co-edited volume. Deadline for submission of materials, March 3, 2026.  Learn more and apply to participate.

January 2026. Second LCP Annual Meeting Symposium 

The symposium including an organized panel, “Meaning, (Mis)Understanding and (Un)Intelligibility in Language: Implications for Conflict and Peacebuilding,” and two listening circles to provide opportunities for participants to reflect on insights from the panel in the context of their own lived experience.

The organized panel brought linguists working in a range of what are sometimes regarded as the more formal subfields of linguistics to explore how their work informs the theme. One topic that is addressed by linguists working at various levels of the grammar, broadly speaking, is human understanding of language (in the broadest possible terms). For phoneticians, this may concern intelligibility and comprehensibility of speech; for semanticists, subjective predicates or compositional semantics; for syntacticians, syntactic ambiguity or cross-linguistic/lectal variation in phrase structure; for psycholinguists, construal or brain activation during language processing. We bring scholars together to consider and discuss their work with a broader linguistic audience, outside of the more typical and restricted contexts of subdisciplinary conferences and workshops. Second, we would like to consider the relevance of formal linguistic work to current-day public conversations that involve language (mis)understanding, (mis)construal, conflict, and the intersubjective negotiation that human spoken and signed interactions require. The aim is to explore how linguistics can contribute to peacebuilding and a better understanding of conflict by illuminating the linguistic forces at work. Panelists: Alicia Beckford Wassink (University of Washington), Molly Babel and Suyuan Liu (University of British Columbia), Lisa Green (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Chris Kennedy (University of Chicago), Kevin B. McGown (University of Kentucky), Erin Wilkinson (University of New Mexico). Circle keepers: Alicia Beckford Wassink (University of Washington), Winona Wynn (Heritage University).

November 2025. NWAV Conference: “Sociolinguistics, Conflict, Justice, Peace”

The NWAV Conference (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) was held in Ann Arbor Michigan. The organizers for the meeting explicitly drew the inspiration for the conference theme (“Sociolinguistics, Conflict, Justice, Peace”) from the Language, Conflict and Peacebuilding Initiative, and invited the 2026 LSA President and 2025 Chair of the LSA Ad Hoc Committee on Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Alicia Beckford Wassink) to be their keynote speaker.

January 2025.The LCP Ad Hoc Committee established 

The LSA Executive Committee established the LCP Ad Hoc Committee with a four-year term to provide an organizational structure to sustain the Language, Conflict, and Peace-Making initiative, move plans forward for the two contracted edited volumes, seek funding for the second symposium and implement those plans. 

January 2025. First LCP Annual Meeting Symposium

A six-part symposium held during the 2025 Annual Meeting, including an opening panel during which linguists and language philosophers who have researched meaning in language, identity, and the intersections between them explored discursive devices (involving layers of meaning) that reveal the power of words to divide or build bridges. The second part of the symposium offered four sessions of listening circles designed to allow participants to listen to the stories of people who have been impacted by language used for harm or healing, and learn from their own and others’ lived experiences. The third part (and final session) offered a space for idea generation and intention-setting for members to work alone and in small groups to solidify their learnings, thoughts and plans for action, small or large. Panelists: Marlyse Baptista (University of Pennsylvania), David Beaver (University of Texas Austin), Lynn Terrell (University of Connecticut), Jessi Grieser (University of Michigan). Circle keepers: Alicia Beckford Wassink (University of Washington), Winona Wynn (Heritage University), Hamze Awawde (Independent peace activist), Anne Hilb (Graymake).

December 2024. The LSA secured contracts with DeGruyter/Brill for two edited volumes related to the LCP initiative

The first volume (Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding: Contributions from Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language), is designed for an academic audience (due September 2027). The second volume (Language Practices for Peace: Linguistic Interventions in Policy, Practice, and Everyday Life), will bring academic linguists into conversation with policy makers and practitioners (due September 2028).

March 2024. The Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (LCP) Initiative was launched

When it established the LCP Initiative, the Executive Committee identified four potential ideas for constructive action. 

1. Develop a curated set of peer-reviewed linguistics articles and books
2. Write a scholarly article
3. Propose an organized session at the 2025 Annual Meeting
4. Consider whether a broadly supported statement might emerge as a result of the previous actions

It then empowered the Secretariat and President to continue developing these ideas, identifying individuals interested in contributing to them, and working toward implementation of those ideas that emerge as viable.