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.

Four initial ideas for action

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.
 

Progress on the LCP Initiative (as of November 2025)

• November 2025. 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 2025 LSA President and Chair of the LSA Ad Hoc Committee on Language, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Alicia Beckford Wassink) to be their keynote speaker.
• October 2025. A three-session symposium was announced for the 2026 Annual Meeting including an organized panel, “Meaning, (Mis)Understanding and (Un)Intelligibility in Language: Implications for Conflict and Peacebuilding,” plus 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 will bring 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).
• May 2025.The Ad Hoc Committee on Language, Conflict and Peacebuilding was established to move the initiative forward over the next four years.
• January 2025. 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.