By Navya Pandit

With misleading headlines and social media-constructed echo chambers dominating the digital space, linguistic experts are encouraging people to critically engage with the content they encounter and make more informed linguistic choices to better convey their ideas.

The University of Maryland’s Language Science Center recently hosted a Language and Conflict Panel on Thursday, April 16, at H.J. Patterson Hall, which discussed how language and communication barriers can lead to social conflict. The director of the Baha’i Chair for World Peace moderated the event.

The panel featured linguistic experts Philip Resnik, Julia Mendelsohn and Erik Nesse, who analyzed language through the lenses of framing, metaphor, and other literary devices, as well as machine translation. They discussed how all of these play a role in how people interpret information and the world around them.

While the panel did not offer definitive answers on how to address language barriers and their influence on conflict, it encouraged audience members to reflect on their engagement with digital media and make more intentional linguistic choices to accurately convey their ideas.

“We make sure that our echo chamber has windows and that we open them occasionally,” said Resnik, a linguistics and advanced computing professor at UMD, speaking about the importance of consuming information from diverse sources to avoid being consumed by polarizing views.

Resnik spoke about listening to podcasts across the political spectrum to get a sense of diverse opinions, even if they do not align with his own. He said this combats homophily, the tendency for people to associate with those similar to them, and instead promotes openness to diverse perspectives.

Logan Fleming, an event attendee who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a cognitive science and linguistics degree, finds it important to question where information comes from and to break down the “artificial,” cultural and linguistic barriers that prevent people from having meaningful conversations.

“Don’t trust [AI with] anything that is important,” said Fleming, who is also a faculty research specialist at the UMD Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security. Fleming emphasized the importance of questioning and deeply engaging with material as opposed to solely relying on AI.

Anna Paradis, a visiting professor and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Oxford, echoed a similar sentiment, emphasizing the importance of engaging in active conversations with her students about being aware of intentional linguistic choices and questioning the information they are presented with, even when it comes from experts in a particular field. 

“It is important — the process and not only the final product,” Paradis concluded, saying that it is important to dedicate time to understanding linguistics to have more effective and meaningful discourse, and thus resolve conflict.

Featured Image: The Language and Conflict Panel discussed how language and communication barriers can lead to social conflict on April 16. Photo courtesy of Naia Lee Hendricks.