LANGUAGE AND CONSTRUCTIVISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: WHERE TO AFTER THREE DECADES OF DEVELOPMENT?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/Keywords:
Language, International Relations, Constructivism, Linguistic Turn, IdeasAbstract
Relationship between Constructivism and language in International Relations has been developing for more than three decades. During that time the importance of language varied in research – its theoretical acceptance moved between nonacceptance and prominent position. These differing valuations of reflections about language somehow paradoxically resulted in treating language as uniform, even in the postpositivist research where language hold a prominent position. The purpose of this article is to refer to the need to return to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections about language and that when it comes to language one has to think about it as of a complex phenomenon. Therefore, the research question of this article is why the entire constructivist thought in IR needs to rethink its relationship with language? Constructivism brought back ideational factors into IR research, so if this complexity of language becomes acknowledged by Constructivism, it appears that it would give a constructivist thought a fresh new look at those same ideational factors.
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