War’ is a perennial issue of world politics. Building upon the insight that war is a socially constructed phenomenon (Bartelson, Butler, Wilhelmsen), one to be “explored… not explained or counted by IR theory” (Barkawi), this paper suggests an original theoretical framework for deciphering the role that language plays in making modern international conflict. The article reflects on the persistence of war in world politics, despite the extensive normative, legal, moral, and even aesthetic rejections of this form of interstate interaction that have developed over many centuries. Taking these injunctions seriously, the project explores how the ‘language of war’ (the elective framing of international issues, relationships, and even forms of actors, within militarised metaphors and symbolic invocations) enacts particular processes which participate in the making of armed (international) conflict. Specifically, the framework suggests that the language of war not only reflects but actively shapes the predispositions and decisions leading to conflict. By framing international disputes in this way, language establishes a symbolic landscape that makes recourse to violence appear permissible, advantageous, and then necessary. It argues that the metaphor of war operates through, and indeed pervades, the ‘ordinary security language’ (Leader Maynard 2022) which attends the modern international state system. By explicitly deploying such framings, which are easily brought to the surface, the language of war – inadvertently, at first – enacts a cycle of radicalisation between domestic constituencies, international diplomacy, and (political) elites. In this way, the paper begins to ask how we can talk ourselves into war.
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