The Soft Power of War

Editor
Lilie Chouliaraki | London School of Economics
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027222336 | EUR 80.00 | USD 120.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027292544 | EUR 80.00 | USD 120.00
 
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This book, which was originally published as a Special Issue of Journal of Language & Politics 4:1 (2005), takes the war in Iraq as an exemplary case through which to demonstrate the changing nature of contemporary power. The book convincingly argues that the effective study of international politics depends today upon our understanding of the interplay between hard (military, economic) and soft (symbolic) power. One might say, between the politics of territory, guns or money and the language of narrating the world in coherent and persuasive stories. Bringing together different strands of discourse analysis with social, historical and, to an extent, political analysis, all contributions seek to illustrate the ways in which a variety of public genres, from political speeches to computer games and from educational material to newspaper reports, produce influential knowledge about the war and shape the ethical and political premises upon which the legitimacy of this war and a ‘vision’ of the emergent world order rests.
[Benjamins Current Topics, 3] 2007.  x, 148 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“Who would have thought that university researchers could offer deeper insights into the significance of how we’re talking about the Iraq conflict than professional political analysts? Me, and I hope, you. These expert analyses of the rhetoric of war-for-peace by leading scholars should be read by all of us who can’t believe what we’re hearing – because this won’t be the last time we hear it.”
“[...] these six papers provide unique and complementary perspectives on the 'soft power' of war. They illuminate the interdependencies that exist between politics and media while providing important insights into the capicity of discourse to construct the world and wield power through consensus rather than physical coercion.”
“Remarkable and diverse analyses of political and media discourses which construct and perform the ‘hard’ power of war and economics as they produce concepts of ‘international community’ and shape the ‘legitimacy’ of war. This collection adds much to our understandings of the ways in which soft power operates, and is a real contribution to the development of current theoretical approaches and practices in the field of critical discourse analysis.”
“This volume allows a unique perspective on the many voices and pictures accompanying the war in Iraq since 2003. The chapters do not offer isolated and de-contextualized perspectives; they manifest in precise and detailed analyses how wars are dealt with in the journalistic and political fields. Thus, we come to understand the global complexity of the war in Iraq, the many discourses which are drawn upon, on the one hand; and, on the other, the astonishing one-dimensionality which raises the question why such rhetoric still seems to "work" and why it retains its persuasive force for many.”
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2017. The past in the present: time and narrative of Balkan wars in media industry and international politics. Third World Quarterly 38:4  pp. 1012 ff. DOI logo
Cap, Piotr
2015. CROSSING SYMBOLIC DISTANCES IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE SPACE. Critical Discourse Studies 12:3  pp. 313 ff. DOI logo
Chouliaraki, Lilie
2009. Witnessing War: Economies of Regulation in Reporting War and Conflict. The Communication Review 12:3  pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Chouliaraki, Lilie
2010. Global Representations of Distant Suffering. In The Handbook of Language and Globalization,  pp. 608 ff. DOI logo
Gillis, Stacy
2008. Noticeboard. Journal of War & Culture Studies 1:2  pp. 201 ff. DOI logo
Hodges, Adam
2015. War Discourse. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Seow Ting
2023. A battle for foreign perceptions: Ukraine’s country image in the 2022 war with Russia. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 19:3  pp. 345 ff. DOI logo
Mirhosseini, Seyyed-Abdolhamid & Mahdieh Noori
2019. Discursive portrayal of Islam as “a part of America’s story” in Obama’s presidential speeches. Journal of Language and Politics 18:6  pp. 915 ff. DOI logo
Simão, Licínia
2017. Bringing “the political” back into European security: challenges to the EU’s ordering of the Eastern Partnership. East European Politics 33:3  pp. 338 ff. DOI logo
Tsirigotis, Anthimos Alexandros
2017. British Defence and Security Policy-Making Practice. In Cybernetics, Warfare and Discourse,  pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Wodak, Ruth
2007. Preface: New and different perspectives on Language and/in Politics. Journal of Language and Politics 6:2  pp. 143 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Communication Studies

Communication Studies

Main BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2007003846 | Marc record