Ebook: International Studies as Political Linguistics

// Pami Aalto, Vilho Harle & Sami Moisio (eds.), International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches.
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012, 131-149.In this chapter I will argue that to be truly interdisciplinary, international studies needs political linguistics. This will equip this wide field to better study global and regional problems, and global-regional interactions. I will illustrate the need for political linguistics by referring to the conceptual history of Asia. The attention to and concern for the ‘Rise of Asia’ has been with us for some three decades now. It is without doubt the greatest change in our time facing the global system. It partly overlaps with another great global change, namely the tortuous but by and large successful development process in the whole ‘Third World’, including Latin America, the Middle East and
Africa. Yet the changes in Asia have been the most dramatic.