The linguistic turn in the social sciences has been fruitful in directing attention towards the preconditions for action, as well as those actions understood as speech acts. However, to the extent ...

Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy:

“A Rose by Any Other Name”: On Ways of Approaching Discourse Analysis

Struggles over Legitimate Diplomathood : the United States Foreign Service, the State Department and Other Government Agencies in Contemporary American Diplomacy

This piece develops a performative take on securitization theory. It argues that rather than seeing authority as a prerequisite for speaking security, we need to zoom in on how speaking security can be used to claim authority. Such acts of claiming authority are crucial to understand the current political struggles to redefine security. In order to do so, I make two claims taking securitization theory further, an iterative claim and a performative claim. One, following Derrida, we must open up what can be said about security, enabling an analysis of how the security logic is not only used, but also challenged and changed. Two, following Butler, we must open up who can speak security, seeing how speaking security can be used to take authority, rather than seeing authority as a precondition for speaking security.

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Performative securitization: from conditions of success to conditions of possibility

Despite the widely accepted notion that international negotiation analysis needs to be a multi-disciplinary enterprise, the field’s state of the art does not reflect this necessary diversity. Strategic and game-theoretical analyses make up the lion’s share of the research. Add to this studies conducted with an approach inspired by socio-psychological paradigms, and nearly all literature on diplomatic negotiations has been covered. Yet whereas communication and interaction between negotiators can perhaps be seen as the most elementary particle negotiations consist of, not much scientific attention has been paid to them. This thesis intends to bring the language of negotiations into the limelight again, and wants to demonstrate the validity of analysing negotiations by studying the interaction between negotiators through discourse analysis. The objective is thus to demonstrate that discourse-analytical techniques can be a refreshing, critical and innovative tool to uproot some of the ossified traditions in the analysis of diplomatic negotiations. By addressing some of the reasons why discourse analysis has not yet gained traction in negotiation analysis, the main theoretical obstacles blocking such a modus operandi can be recognized. Based on the identification of differences in the level of analysis, the unit of analysis, and the ontological and epistemological morphology as the main discrepancies between negotiation analysis and discourse analysis, it will be argued that discourse theory, a discourse-analytical approach derived from the work of Laclau and Mouffe, is the best-suited method to conquer these obstacles. After a short introduction to discourse theory’s basic principles and analytical apparatus, I will develop a discourse-theoretical approach that is appropriate for the study of diplomatic negotiations, keeping in mind the obstacles identified as impeding such a procedure. To illustrate the viability of discourse theory as a paradigm in diplomatic negotiation analysis, I will then apply this approach to a case study drawn from the context of the EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly, an inter-institutional forum part of the Eastern Partnership. A discourse-theoretical method will be operationalized to look at how discourse is used to conceptualize institutional relations; bureaucratic infrastructure; socialization efforts and cooperation efforts. From this, practical and scientific lessons will be drawn about how the way negotiators talk and speak affects the negotiation process. EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies Academic Year 2015-2016

The language diplomats speak : a discourse-theoretical approach to the negotiations in the EURONEST parliamentary assembly

Gramsican approaches in International Relations (IR) have sought to outline the relationship between ideas and material forces in the construction of world order. Scholars working within this broad school have sought to emphasise that ideas are material forces, and must be considered as concrete historical structures (Cox, 1987) central to the establishment of particular historical and hegemonic blocs. This literature has primarily focused on the discursive construction of hegemony by international elites and the impact this has on political practices. While these insights are important in understanding the construction of world order, it is necessary to extend them to include the creation of actual physical structures – that is, it is vital to link the ideational aspects of hegemony with actual material processes. I will argue that a consideration of the role of technology provides an ideal vehicle for this process, building on the preliminary work of Bieler and Morton in this regard (2008). Technological structures are the product of particular cultural values and embed these cultural values within their very structure. Physical material factors thereby express ideational values constructed by specific social forces. Social practices are thus not only a function of the dominance of certain ideological formations, but also the product of the material environment itself and the manner in which the human metabolism with nature must function through these physical constructions.

/pdf/the-meaning-of-materiality-reconsidering-the-materialism-of-udjrydswug.pdf

Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy:

Citations

“A Rose by Any Other Name”: On Ways of Approaching Discourse Analysis

Struggles over Legitimate Diplomathood : the United States Foreign Service, the State Department and Other Government Agencies in Contemporary American Diplomacy

Performative securitization: from conditions of success to conditions of possibility

The language diplomats speak : a discourse-theoretical approach to the negotiations in the EURONEST parliamentary assembly

The meaning of materiality: reconsidering the materialism of Gramscian IR

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