Discourse Structures, Weaponization of Language and Ethiopia’s Civil War

The use of language to alienate, ostracize, dehumanize, and mobilize people on racial, ethnic, and other forms of profiling has been a prominent feature of the Ethiopian conflict between the government of Mr Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). In fact, the jingoistic vitriol in the civil war amounted to hate speech which reflected the deeper ethno-regional fissures which have been embedded in Ethiopia’s political tapestry for many years. The Tigray/Addis Ababa conflict not only heightened both the ethno-cultural and political divides in the country, but also, worsened the vitriolic speech in the framing processes of the adversarial “other.” This rendered language itself a choice weapon of warfare. Using discourse analysis, the hermeneutic analysis and the articulatory theory, this paper, therefore, argues that Ethiopia’s ethno-provincialist politics, fragmental federalism and the state’s hegemonic discourses have together exacerbated and further entrenched the political disintegration of the Ethiopian body politic while also rendering post-conflict peace-making and nation-building efforts more hazardous. While the parties to the conflict have agreed an African Union (AU) sponsored ceasefire, genuine peace-building efforts, this paper urges, must begin with the disavowal of inflammatory language by all the belligerents and a concurrent detoxification of the national political discourse.