Introduction: Expressions of War in Australia and the Pacific - Language, Trauma, Memory, and Official Discourse

Abstract

This volume seeks to add to a growing field of scholarship that has turned its focus to understanding how language (and languages) play a role in war. In particular, it takes up several threads of the story of language and war that have not received much attention, notably language, trauma, violence, and the language of remembrance, as well as providing some fresh perspectives on the function and impact of official discourse and propaganda through an examination of the way language is used and deployed in wartime contexts. It seeks to shift the geographical focus to histories that have not been much included in the current scholarship, with a special focus on Australian experiences. In addition, it hopes that by covering a broad chronological focus—the First World War through to recent veteran experiences—it will help to further develop comparative work across space and time. This introduction to the collection provides a brief survey of recent scholarship in the area of language and war, as well as the relevant fields of trauma studies and memory studies, with a particular focus on work concerned with twentieth- and twenty-first-century conflicts.