The ontology of conflict
- Greco Morasso, Sara Istituto Linguistico-Semiotico (ILS), Facoltà di scienze della comunicazione, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
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2008
Published in:
- Pragmatics & cognition. - John Benjamins publishing company. - 2008, vol. 16, no. 3, p. 540-567
English
This paper aims at clarifying the ontology of conflict as a preliminary for constructing a conflict mapping guide (Wehr 1979). After recalling the main definitions elaborated in different disciplines, the meaning of conflict is elicited through semantic analysis based on corpus evidence. Two fundamental meanings emerge: conflict as an interpersonal hostility between two or more human subjects, and conflict as a propositional incompatibility. These two states of affairs are significantly related, because the latter tends to generate the former whenever the incompatible positions are embodied by as many parties who feel personally questioned. The semantic analysis allows sketching the ontology of the conflictual situation that can serve to generate a conflict mapping guide, and facing several crucial aspects that are relevant both to the study and to the management of conflicts. In the former perspective, it allows the comparison of the situation of interpersonal conflict with the seemingly similar process of controversy.
- Language
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- English
- Classification
- Information, communication and media sciences
- License
- License undefined
- Identifiers
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- RERO DOC 23156
- DOI 10.1075/p
- ARK ark:/12658/srd1318305
- Persistent URL
- https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1318305
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