Back from the Battlefield: Resurrecting Peace Linguistics

Abstract

This paper seeks to review efforts to develop the field of Peace Linguistics. Based on reviewing 20 years of published articles in Journal of Peace Education and The International Journal of Peace Studies, I identified what appears to be a significant and on-going disconnect – a gap – between Language Studies and Peace Studies, or between Language Education and Peace Education, or between Peace Education/Studies and Linguistics/Applied Linguistics. In the second part of this paper, I explore this gap in more depth, and propose some possible reasons for this disconnect. In the third and final section, I give some details of a new course, Peace Linguistics, piloted by the English Language Teaching and Learning Department at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, in January and February of 2017.