Contents

Preface and Dedication: With and Without ix

1 Introduction 1
The Chaos that Surrounds 1
The Purposes, Aims and Focus of This Book 3
Chapter Overview 4
The Backdrop: Landscapes of Conflict 5
Defi ning Peacebuilding 6
Person to Person Peacebuilding, Language Teaching, Peace
Linguistics and Our Research 7
Person to Person Peacebuilding and Intercultural
Communication 11
Peacebuilding and Intercultural Communication in
Practice: The Example of International Educational
Exchange Programs 13
Peacebuilding and Intercultural Communication: Theory
and Empirical Research 15
Frameworks for Peacebuilding 18
Methods, Projects, Participants 22
Deductive Content and Critical Discourse Analysis 22
An Online Project with Afghan English Learners:
Participants 26
Overview of Chapters 29
2 Understandings of Peacebuilding and Intercultural
Communication 32
Introduction 32
Understandings of Peacebuilding 33
Research perspectives 33
Perspectives from practice 35
Peacebuilding in Practice: The UN Example 38
Understandings of Intercultural Communication
Competence 39
Intercultural Communication Competence across
Peacebuilding Levels 40

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vi Person to Person Peacebuilding, Intercultural Communication and ELT

The Personal Dimension of Peacebuilding and

Intercultural Communicative Competence 41
The Relational Dimension of Peacebuilding and
Intercultural Communicative Competence 44
The Structural Dimension of Peacebuilding and
Intercultural Communicative Competence 47
Conclusion 49
3 Context(s) 51
Context(s) and Our Research 51
Context 1: Afghanistan, history and the lives of our
Afghan participants 54
Context 2: US-based graduate TESOL programs and
our participants 58
Context 3: The virtual intercultural borderlands of
online exchange 61
4 Person to Person Peacebuilding at the Personal Level 72
The Personal Dimension of Peacebuilding 72
Changes in Participants’ Beliefs and Attitudes about
Themselves: Resistance, Fear, Self-Confidence 75
Changes in Participants’ Beliefs and Attitudes about
Others: Reconfiguring Perceptions, Out-Groups
and In-Groups 81
Changes in Participants’ Beliefs and Attitudes about the
World: Discursive Constructions of Afghanistan
and Beyond 87
Changes in Beliefs about Self, Others and the World 90
5 The Relational Dimension of Person to Person Peacebuilding 93
The Growing Nature of Relationships through Dialogue 95
Structuring Relationships: Starting from Similarities 96
Structuring of Relationships: Embracing the Difference 102
Closeness and Distance 105
Use or Sharing of Power 107
Maximizing Mutual Understanding: Empathy 110
Resistance: Poorly Functioning Communication 113
6 Person to Person Peacebuilding at the Structural Level 115
Participants’ Understandings of the Causes and Effects of
Conflicts 117
Participants’ understandings of the effects of conflict 117
The demand for English as an effect of conflict 122
Participants’ Understandings of the Causes of Conflict 125
Social actors and causes of conflict 125
Differential access to resources: Technology 127
 Contents vii

Differential access to resources: English and

‘native speakers’ 129
Conflict and societal norms 131
Understandings of Inclusion, Decision Making and
Means to More Broadly Include Voices 133
Understanding How Structural Discourses Enable and
Constrain Individuals and Groups 136
Ways to Create Conditions and Relations that Contribute
to Social Justice and Peace 138
Resistance and the Structural Level of Person to Person
Peacebuilding 142
Conclusion 145
7 Fostering Person to Person Peacebuilding While Teaching
Language and Intercultural Communication 146
Reflection, Writing and the Reflective Practitioner 147
Activities: Guided reflection, modeling, sharing 149
Understanding Differential Access to Resources 152
Activity: Access to resources 153
Exploring Identity, Leveraging Peacebuilding 154
Activities: Exploring identities 156
Agency and Power 159
Activities: Agency in the classroom and in the virtual
intercultural borderlands 161
Activities: Agency beyond the classroom, beyond
the virtual intercultural borderlands 162
Agency and Emotion 164
Activities 164
Concluding Remarks 166

Afterword: August 2021 169

References 170
Index 189