Andy Curtis, Graduate School of Education, Anaheim University, California, USA

Peace Linguistics: From the Old to the New

Two years ago, I published an article in this AL Forum titled “Peace Linguistics: The Promise, the Anti-Climax, and the Resurrection,” which presented an account of the origins of peace linguistics (PL) and its development over time to the present day. At that time, I defined PL as:

an area of applied linguistics, based on systematic analyses of the ways in which language is used to communicate/create conflict and to communicate/create peace. PL is interdisciplinary, drawing on fields such as peace studies/peace education and conflict resolution/transformation, bringing those together with fields such as sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis, including text/genre analysis (Curtis, 2018).

Although that definition still holds, the new peace linguistics (NPL; Curtis, 2020) has emerged as being more distinctive from the earlier versions of PL, in which the emphasis was on using language, especially by users of English as a second/foreign language, in ways that would build harmonious relationships rather than create tension. To be clear, the NPL, which still aligns with the aforementioned 2018 definition, is part of critical discourse analysis. However, although NPL draws heavily on critical discourse analysis and rhetorical analysis, the latter are much more wide-ranging than NPL, which is far more specific, focused on the language of those in power, as it is their language choices that make a more or less peaceful world possible.

In NPL, the assumption is that using “positive” language to avoid conflict should be understood to be a prerequisite of communicating peacefully, although whether that is, in fact, understood by everyone is open to question. Regardless, though previous PL practitioners gave helpful advice on using peaceful language, they did so largely without analyzing actual language used, which made previous PL research more prescriptive than descriptive. Therefore, NPL emerged in response to the need for something more descriptive and focused on the language of the people who have the power to make peace or to start wars.

That brings us to the president of the USA. The reason for focusing on the USA is the fact that, although America’s standing in the world has declined in recent years—it is now less respected and less trusted than it was in previous years—the USA is still, for now, seen as the most powerful country in the world, at least in terms of its economic and military strength. Therefore, for better or for worse, the words of the U.S. president—regardless of who occupies that position at the time—are some of the most potentially influential in the world. And in terms of the sheer volume of language produced by a world leader, the 45th president of the USA, Donald Trump, may be unmatched. For example, New York Times journalists reviewed more than 260,000 words spoken by President Trump between late March and the end of April 2020, during his COVID-19 pandemic press briefings. That is well over 6,000 words of oral text per day—and that does not even include the many thousands more words circulated on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

In the following section of this article, we will take an in-depth look at one example of “warist discourse,” in which a false equivalence logical fallacy is presented by conflating “militaristic” with “law and order,” to implement a strategy that can be called “war and order.”

In (Self)Praise of Militarism

On 2 June 2020, the Late Night with Seth Myers show, which has more than 3.8 million subscribers, showed five video recordings of Donald Trump (“Trump threatens to deploy military”, 2020), from his presidential campaign speeches between July 2015 and October 2015. The Late Night recordings, which as of late July 2020 had been viewed more than 3 million times, were aired on four different U.S. news channel and included the following Trump quotes:

• “I am the most militaristic person” (CNN)
• “I would say I am the most militaristic person on that stage” (NBC)
• “I am the most militaristic person you’ve ever had on your show, believe me” (Fox)
• “I’m the most militaristic person ever” (CNN)
• “I am the most military-based and the most militaristic person on your show” (CBS)

Militarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “The belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.” Based on that definition, and on the statements made by Trump, he was describing himself as having the greatest desire (of anyone, ever) that the government of the USA should have the strongest military capability, and be prepared to use it most aggressively to defend or promote the national interests of the USA. Though the claim can be made that the governments of all countries wish to defend and promote their own country’s interests, it is the aggressively militaristic nature of that defending and promoting that can lead to armed conflict. At the very least, such “warist discourse” as, “I’m the most militaristic person ever”—apart from being an obvious exaggeration—makes the likelihood of an escalating armed conflict much greater than the likelihood of a peaceful resolution.

Fast forward 5 years, to the (Western Hemisphere) Summer of 2020, when President Trump, during Black Lives Matter rallies and marches, across the USA and around the world, proclaimed himself “the president of law and order.” The phrase law and order is defined as “A situation characterized by respect for and obedience to the rules of a society.” However, while Trump was addressing the nation from the tranquility of the White House Rose Garden, “a series of military vehicles rolled out front on Pennsylvania Avenue and military police and law enforcement clashed with protesters” (Lemire et al., 2020). The peaceful protesters were dispersed with tear gas, flash bombs, and police charging on horseback. Furthermore, as the Washington Post columnist Rampell (2020) reported, in her piece titled “The Lawless Law-and-Order President,” “Perhaps they [the President and his aides] might consider leading by example. This administration, after all, must be among the most lawless and disorderly in U.S. history [emphasis added].” Highlighting the conspicuous contradiction between the political rhetoric and the reality on the ground and in the streets, Rampell (2020) summarizes

an exhaustive catalogue of the Trump White House’s demonstrated contempt for the rule of law…among the heaps of wrongdoing committed by White House aides, Trump Organization employees and the president himself — as well as lawbreaking outside the administration that our president has either ignored or encouraged.

Such a large gap between what is being said and what is being done recalls the phrase, “Do as we say, not as we do,” which may indicate that the discourse has crossed the line of being contradictory, into what may be described as hypocritical.

By comparing and contrasting the rhetoric and the reality, NPL can help to uncover the deeper meaning behind the words of world leaders, especially in terms of whether their words make war or peace more or less likely. Connecting Trump’s 2015 campaign speeches, in which he repeatedly referred to himself as “the most militaristic” person (ever), with his multiple descriptions of himself as “the law and order president,” we can see how the two ideas have been conflated. As a result, “law and order” was not seen by the Trump administration as preventing people from breaking the law and avoiding chaos but seen in terms of militarizing the police: Law and Order = Police Armed as Soldiers at War.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Princeton University professor Mummolo reported on his detailed and extensive study of militarized policing in the USA. He concluded that such policing was “more often deployed in communities of color, and – contrary to claims by police administrators – provide no detectable benefits in terms of officer safety or violent crime reduction” (Mummolo, 2018, p. 9181). On the contrary, Mummolo (and others) have found that not only does militarized policing not lead to law and order, but it can lead to significantly more violence, damage, destruction, and even loss of life.

Worryingly, the militarization of the police in the USA (and perhaps elsewhere as well) appears to be escalating. For example, according to reliable reports from news agencies such as the BBC (“Portland protests”), in Portland, Oregon, in late July 2020, “Federal officers in unmarked vehicles appeared to forcefully seize protesters from the streets and detain them without justification. They have also fired tear gas and less-lethal munitions into crowds of demonstrators.” Although the demonstrations were mostly peaceful, the Trump administration described them using phrases such as “a violent mob … of anarchists and agitators.” (“Portland protests”). Members of the opposition Democrat party, however, described the federal officers as “unidentified Stormtroopers…kidnapping protesters.” According to the Portland Mayor, “[the federal agents’] presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism,” (“Portland protests”) which supports Mummolo’s (2018) findings.

NPL practitioners will be monitoring this “war of words” in the USA, and elsewhere, to develop a better understanding of how language is being used by world leaders to make peace or to create conflict. In this way, we hope that NPL can help applied linguistics to contribute to reducing conflict and to the creation of a more peaceful, less strife-torn world.

References

Bandow, D. (2018, April 3). What the world thinks of Trump's America now. CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/03/how-trump-has-weakened-the-worlds-view-of-the-us.html

Curtis, A. (2018). Peace linguistics: The promise, the anticlimax, and the resurrection. AL Forum. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolalis/issues/2018-10-02/2.html

Curtis, A. (2020). ‘Warist discourse’ and peace linguistics in pandemic times. The Word, 29(3) 46–48. http://hawaiitesol.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/Word/2020%20May.pdf

Drew, K. (2020, 15 January). U.S. suffers greatest global decline in trust. US News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-01-15/us-trustworthiness-rating-dives-in-2020-best-countries-report

Kumar, A. (2020, June 3). Trump campaign gets its cue: Go all-in on ‘law and order’. Politico.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/03/trump-campaign-protests-296864

Law and order. Lexico (no date). https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/law_and_order

Lemire, J., Colvin, J., & Suderman, A. (2020, June 1). Trump says he’s president of law and order in speech, as police clash with peaceful protesters nearby. Time. https://time.com/5846347/trump-law-order-george-floyd-protests/

Militarism. Lexico (no date). https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/militarism

Mummolo, J. (2018). Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 115(37), 9181–9186.

Portland protests: All you need to know about Trump’s crackdown. (2020, July 20). BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53473732

Rampell, C. (2020, June 4). The lawless law-and-order president. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lawless-law-and-order-president/2020/06/04/04977832-a695-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

Trump threatens to deploy military in response to protests. (2020, 2 June). Late Night with Seth Myers: A closer look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9drJy2Eohh0

US News and World Report. (no date). Power. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/power-rankings