"This is not a book that any serious student of war
and peace can afford to ignore."—Robert L. Ivie, Indiana
University
When the stakes of public words and actions are global
and permanent, and especially when they involve war and
peace, can we afford not to seek their meaning? For three
decades, Francis A. Beer has pioneered the effort to
discover, describe, and connect pieces of the complex
puzzle of war, peace, their interrelationship, and their
causes.
In this volume, Beer (joined by colleagues as co-authors
of some chapters) examines the cognitive, behavioral, and
linguistic dimensions of war and peace. Language, he shows,
is important because it mediates between thought and action.
It expresses beliefs about war and peace and affects the per-
ceptions of potential adversaries about one's own intentions.
Beer examines how language transmits and creates meaning
through interaction with specific audiences. His case studies
include the Somalian intervention, Sarajevo and the Balkan con-
flict, and the Gulf War. Moving beyond the discrete words of war,
the book takes a broader view of how political participants
interact in war and peace through continuous streams of commun-
ication that reflect and construct worlds of meaning.
This volume brings together insights and evidence from political
science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, history, and rhetorical
studies and applies them in a focused way to the problem of war
and peace.
_________________________________________________________
FRANCIS A. BEER is a professor of political science at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. He earned his Ph.D. from the
University of California, Berkeley, and has published six
books and monographs, including Peace against War: The Ecology
of International Violence and Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn
in International Relations, co-edited with Robert Hariman.
Number Five: Presidential Rhetoric Series
