TY - JOUR
AU - Cohen, Raymond
AB - Abstract World leaders and diplomats conduct much international negotiation and conflict resolution today in English, which has become the modern global interlanguage. English speakers tend to assume that English transcends culture, perfectly capturing objective features of the external world. Comparison of the conflict resolution vocabularies of English, Arabic, and Hebrew demonstrates that themodel of conflict resolution implicit in English terminology is merely one possible version. The three languages vary significantly in their built-in assumptions about the nature of conflict, objectives of conflict resolution, and anticipation of what the termination of conflict entails. Such conceptual antinomies may hinder conflict resolution by impeding communication and frustrating the synchronization of negotiating moves. Nonnative speakers tend to speak in English but think in the mother tongue. Moreover, frontal negotiation is simply the point of contact among delegations whose consultation, decision making, drafting, and political processes are conducted in the native language. Israeli-Syrian negotiations since 1991 exemplify some dissonant expectations about conflict resolution across Hebrew and Arabic. © 2001 International Studies Association
TI - Language and Conflict Resolution: The Limits of English
JF - International Studies Review
DO - 10.1111/1521-9488.00224
DA - 2002-12-17
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/language-and-conflict-resolution-the-limits-of-english-EiK5xpZAEM
SP - 1
EP - 51
VL - Advance Article
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -