Language Analysis for Peace Science

I assign myself an apparently simple task in this essay. I seek to justify my belief that peace science ought to accommodate substantive analyses grounded in language and logic. Moreover, it should encourage and sustain efforts to develop methodological forms that support such analyses. Our shared intellectual heritage complexifies my task. Owing to our location in the intellectual history of social science, we have each been trained in methodological practices consonant with our mostly positive and behavioral legacies. The success of these practices is beyond dispute. They are pertinent to a wide range of questions of interest to peace scientists. It thus befalls to me to show that language modeling would widen that range. But I must first show that questions exist for which positive and behavioral methods are less well-suited than language methods. Once I complete these tasks, I illustrate my meaning by describing briefly the language methods I have used in my empirical work.