Humans are adaptive beings. Gradually, we have produced the fundamental capacities for our cooperation, recognition of intentions, and interaction which led to the development of language and culture. The present collective volume builds on an orientation to pragmatics as the sustained and… read more
This book combines scholarship in pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and philosophy to address the problem of violence in language. How do words wound? What is the relation between physical and linguistic violence? How do racial invectives, misogynous language, homophobic slurs, among other forms… read more
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… read more
This chapter explores two competing models of adaptation of discourses: self-containment and contamination. The first model is contradictorily a non-adaptable framework that scales the social circulation of text and talk as expandable, i.e. scalable, yet seemingly un-modifiable in its expansion.… read more
This paper examines two hypotheses concerning the relationship between language and violence. (1) Language does not merely represent violence, but enacts its own type of violence. (2) The use of violent language participates in the demarcation of political and subjective viability in the public… read more
The Complexo do Alemão, a group of 12 favelas in Rio de Janeiro, attracted the attention of Brazilian and International corporate media when the police and the army ‘pacified’ the favelas in 2010. Part of a broader political and economic project to make Rio de Janeiro ‘safe for large-scale events,… read more
