Links Across the Abyss: Language and Logic in International Relations

Abstract

Constructivists have distanced themselves from questions of language in order to engage the "positivist" mainstream in dialogue. Yet language has played a central role in one important strand of positivism. Current debates in international relations assume a question about whether language is important. This article asks how or why language is important to the study of IR by exploring two distinct phases of the linguistic turn. The first phase, associated with logical positivism, approaches language as a picture of the logic of reality; the second, at the roots of a range of alternative approaches, approaches language use as analogous to making moves in a game. In constructing a link between two phases of the linguistic turn, the abyss separating "positivists," who aren't concerned with language, and "poststructuralists," who are, is replaced with a spectrum of different approaches to language and logic in international relations. The significance of these differences is illustrated in a variety of theoretical and empirical examples.

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“…From an epistemological perspective, discourse analysis has the objective of identifying the rules, norms and meanings that constitute the social structure within which the actors operate (Fierke 2002). The term 'discourse' encompasses a complex set of interactions 'of which text is just a part ' Fairclough notes (1989, 24).…”

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“…Discursive practices have the ability to constitute the ontological basis of reality and subjects (Ruggie, 1998: 881) and establish the boundaries of self and possible action. Critical constructivism pays more attention to language and discourse, pointing to its role in constituting and constructing social reality, thus producing the world (Fierke, 2001(Fierke, , 2002Hopf, 1998;Onuf, 2002).…”