CU Boulder political scientist 书中行动 argues it’s not just 什么 a government says about its ethnic minorities, 但它使用的语言也可能具有威胁性

多年来, 书中行动 has been pondering a perplexing mystery: Why do some countries where a multi-ethnic populace once lived together in harmony devolve into civil war, 屠杀和种族清洗?

“如果博彩平台推荐看看前南斯拉夫, 我出生和长大的地方, it’s a big puzzle: why the country went from one of the most ethnically harmonious countries to ethnic cleansing and genocide in a few short years,蒂尔说。, 科罗拉多大学博尔德系教授 政治科学他的研究重点包括武装冲突以及如何制止武装冲突.

In Yugoslavia after World War II, “you had multiple ethnic groups that lived in relative harmony. There was evidence that this was real because people intermarried and neighborhoods were ethnically mixed. 很多人都是混血，”他说. “And then things took a 180-degree turn that ended up in the 1990s with very brutal conflicts.”

虽然种族冲突的一些动态仍然未知, 行动表示, 近年来 researchers have come to believe that dehumanizing ethnic “others” can help explain how seemingly ordinary individuals become willing not only to fight but also to commit horrific crimes against their former neighbors. 反过来, researchers have suspected that dehumanization stems from perceptions that ethnic others pose a violent threat to one’s own group, 他说.

在这项研究的基础上进行扩展, 蒂尔和乔治亚大学的合著者谢恩·辛格最近撰写了这篇论文。不如人:威胁、语言和相对的非人性化 刊登于 《博彩平台推荐》，他们在书中提出，这不公平 什么 执政当局表示，少数民族可能构成潜在威胁, 但同时 语言 在这个过程中，它与这些群体进行交流.

“政府选择用母语来传达(威胁感), 而不是通常使用和理解的非母语, puts the audience on notice that the message is explicitly meant for them to the exclusion of ethnic others,作者写道。, adding that “such messaging can exacerbate us-versus-them perceptions and lead to extreme negative attitudes such as dehumanization.”

沟通的威胁

供他们研究, 蒂尔和辛格专门研究了印度, where a native (Hindi) and non-native (English) 语言 are understood and used by a sizeable portion of the population. 在基于调查的实验中, the authors hired an international market research firm to ask Indian respondents about their views toward Muslims and Chinese. 值得注意的是, 近年来, 伊斯兰恐怖分子和中国军队都威胁了印度的安全.

双语印度受访者被随机分配用印地语或英语进行调查. They were asked about their perceptions of the humanness of Muslim or Chinese people and the groups to which they belong. Responses to that portion of the survey showed that those receiving the survey in the Hindi 语言 triggered the dehumanization of Muslims, 而汉语的非人性化不受调查语言分配的影响.

行动表示 those findings are likely due to the fact that the government of Narendra Modi has repeatedly demonized India’s Muslim population in Hindi while remaining comparatively silent about the threat from China.

Survey respondents also were randomly assigned to a control condition (a short article about ship recycling) or one of two recent news briefs about violent events that recently took place: a terrorist attack by an Islamic group or Chinese military aggression. 在这种情况下, 印地语所传达的威胁, 而不是英语, 最能促使人们对中国人采取非人的态度吗, 行动表示.

相反, the story about the Islamic terror attack did not have a detectable effect on survey respondents’ attitudes toward Muslims. 乍一看, 这似乎有悖常理, 但提尔表示，莫迪频繁的反穆斯林言论可能已经渗透了民众, 使受访者对额外的沟通威胁不敏感.

印度次大陆以外的影响

蒂尔说，调查结果对印度以外的政治沟通也有影响, noting that many countries in Africa and Asia have populations that speak both native and non-native 语言s, 通常是法语或英语, 取决于他们的殖民历史.

“与用非母语进行交流相比, a native 语言 environment exacerbates the effect of threat on dehumanization of a rival ethnicity,蒂尔和辛格写道, adding that “this suggests that unscrupulous leaders in multilingual countries with identity-based cleavages and a widely understood non-native 语言 can select the 语言 of communication to incite xenophobic attitudes.”

Such was the case with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian strongman who came to power in the late 1980s. 行动表示 Milosevic broke with the tradition of using the more neutral Serbo-Croatian 语言 blend written in the Latin alphabet and popularized in Yugoslavia after WWII in favor of “pure” Serbian and the Cyrillic alphabet. Milosevic built his political career on demonizing essentially powerless ethnic minorities—initially ethnic Albanians, 他认为这些人对塞尔维亚人构成了生存威胁.

蒂尔很快指出，印度不是前南斯拉夫. 也, 他说，就像领导人可以用母语煽动仇外态度一样, it is possible for more peaceable leaders to communicate in a non-native 语言 to help promote interethnic harmony. 他以印度首任总理为例, 贾瓦哈拉尔·尼赫鲁, who chose English as the 语言 in which to deliver his landmark speech celebrating his country’s newfound freedom, 是在种族冲突的背景下发生的吗.

然而, the risk remains that when the leaders of a country essentially weaponize native 语言 against its ethnic others, 从悬崖边缘拉回来是非常困难的, 行动表示.

“传统的民族冲突文学强调了一个被称为出价的概念. When an attention-seeking leader starts to reference the threat to their group by ethnic others, 事情往往变得更加极端, 而不是走向适度. 所以基本上, 如果有人已经在传递极端主义的信息, the way for someone else to get attention in the political space is with an even more extremist message. 这是一次又一次的激进化. It’s then very hard to go the other way; moderate voices tend to get ignored and it’s the more extremist voices that get listened to in response to a sense of threat to the group.

“这或多或少就是前南斯拉夫的情况，”他说. 事情变得越来越极端，破坏了原有的民族和睦感.”

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