In:Handbook of Pragmatics: 28th Annual Installment
Edited by Jana Declercq, Frank Brisard, Sigurd D’hondt and Mieke Vandenbroucke
[Handbook of Pragmatics 28] 2025
► pp. 3–25
Conflict and violence
Published online: 18 September 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.28.con20
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.28.con20
Abstract
This chapter explores the intersection of conflict, violence, and language, highlighting how
communicative practices can variously be enabled, affected or jeopardized by symbolic and physical violence. Conflict and
violence pervade human interaction, manifesting across a spectrum of discursive domains — from everyday narratives and
workplace relations to political discourse and historical memory. While traditional linguistic models have often privileged
language use as a cooperative endeavor among polite individuals, recent scholarship has brought to light the central role of
uncooperative communicative practices, including bullying, hate speech, aggressive language, and racial slurs. Examining
phenomena such as verbal conflict, hate speech, and the (in)securitization of language, this chapter discusses how violence
operates not only through explicit confrontation but also through indirect strategies such as plausible deniability, post-hoc
reframing of intentions, and the deflection of meaning. It further considers how nonviolence can emerge as a deliberate
collective practice aimed at reorienting aggression toward transformative action, equality, and hope. By integrating insights
from linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and related fields, the chapter underscores that understanding violence — and
working actively to reorient it — is not only a critical analytical task, but a fundamental responsibility.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Challenging the “positivity bias” in pragmatics and sociolinguistics
- 3.Conflict in language
- 4.Violence and language
- 5.Empirical cases of conflict and violence in language
- 5.1Intentionality, deniability, and racist speech
- 5.2Hate speech, under the radar
- 5.3De-securitizing the “language of the enemy”
- 6.Conclusion: Toward nonviolence and hope
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