Discourse and emotions in international relations

Koschut, S., Hall, T. H., Wolf, R., Solomon, T. , Hutchison, E. and Bleiker, R. (2017) Discourse and emotions in international relations. International Studies Review, 19(3), pp. 481-508. (doi: 10.1093/isr/vix033)

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Abstract

The field of International Relations (IR) has recently witnessed the emergence of a wide variety of different approaches to make sense of the many ways emotions work in and through discourse. This forum takes stock of and investigates this link based on two interrelated questions: Why study emotions through discourse? How can we study emotions through discourse? Concerning the first question, we argue that textual and verbal utterances provide us with a promising way to make emotions empirically accessible for researchers. Regarding the second question, we argue that it is essential to develop specific criteria for the study of emotions via speech acts. We propose three criteria that the study of emotion discourse must answer to, which revolve around theory (what is an emotion?), expression (how are emotions communicated?), and effects (what do emotions do?). In a step toward fostering engagement and dialogue on these questions, the contributors of this forum propose a variety of approaches to study emotion discourse in world politics. The idea is to explore the ways in which discourse evokes, reveals, and engages emotions and how these effects can speak to larger questions in IR. Precisely, the goal with this forum is to go beyond the “emotions matter” approach of the first wave of emotions scholarship in IR to offer more specific ways to integrate the consideration of emotion into existing research, particularly that of a constructivist vein.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Solomon, Professor Ty
Authors: Koschut, S., Hall, T. H., Wolf, R., Solomon, T., Hutchison, E., and Bleiker, R.
College/School:College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
Journal Name:International Studies Review
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISSN:1521-9488
ISSN (Online):1468-2486
Published Online:03 November 2017
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2017 The Authors
First Published:First published in International Studies Review 19(3): 481-508
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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