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Taking Radical Disagreement Seriously: Filling the Discourse Analytic Gap in the Study of Intractable Asymmetric Conflicts

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Discourse and Conflict

Abstract

This chapter identifies a research gap between examples of radical disagreement and most forms of discourse analysis across the social sciences. Although examples of radical disagreement are now accessible to textual analysis at all levels on the Internet and constitute the main reproducible manifestation of language in conflict, few discourse analytic approaches so far to my knowledge—despite their great variety—take this seriously or regard the phenomenon of radical disagreement as a feasible, or even legitimate, subject for research. Having identified the research gap and set out reasons for it, the chapter moves on to outline some possible ways to fill this gap. In relation to theory, the chapter suggests a joint text-linguistic/conflict analysis research programme that takes examples of radical disagreement seriously as its main object of analysis. This uncovers the nature of linguistic intractability and explains why conflict resolution fails in the communicative sphere. In relation to practice, the chapter ends by relating this briefly to the opportunities for addressing discursive conflict asymmetry that open up as a result.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is not quite the same as Chantal Mouffe’s idea of agonism. In Mouffe’s conception of agonistic pluralism, the raw antagonism and violence characteristic of human society in general (“the political”) is domesticated and tamed within the democratic agon so that “enemies” become “adversaries”, who thereby gain a respect for each other as well as for the democratic “rules of the game” that define the space of democratic “politics” (Mouffe 1999: 755). Whereas what I call agonistic dialogue is precisely verbal exchange between enemies. It still includes the antagonistic. Agonistic dialogue is the dialogue of intense political struggle in general without trying to distinguish yet between domesticated and undomesticated varieties (Mouffe 1999: 745–748).

  2. 2.

    This can apply both ways because not-p can be written q, in which case the radical disagreement can be written |(A) “not-q”; (B) “q” |.

  3. 3.

    John Locke was the one who suggested that a great deal of apparent disagreement was mutual misunderstanding: “the greatest part of Disputes are more about the signification of Words than a real difference in the Conception of Things” (1690/1975: III.ix.16).

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  1. University of Bradford, Bradford, UK

    Oliver Ramsbotham

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  1. Oliver Ramsbotham
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  1. Department of Languages and General Studies, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Innocent Chiluwa

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Ramsbotham, O. (2021). Taking Radical Disagreement Seriously: Filling the Discourse Analytic Gap in the Study of Intractable Asymmetric Conflicts. In: Chiluwa, I. (eds) Discourse and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76485-2_2

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