Peacebuilding in a Multilingual World

Abstract

The UN and NATO peace operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina were multilingual from the beginning. The forces were multinational, composed of military units contributed by many countries, bringing different languages and cultures. In some respects this echoed the changes taking place in the globalized world of the late twentieth century, with large and diverse migrations of population, traversed by mobile individuals and groups (Collins, Slembrouck and Baynham 2009). The local population was affected to a lesser extent by migration and mobility but experienced increasingly diverse flows of information through different media. It was deeply riven by cultural and ethnic differences that worked to diversify their language practices. This chapter will focus on the multilingual nature of the military forces, where complexities operated at several different levels, from the headquarters through to individual multinational units.