ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a grammatical approach, by reference to the linguistic turn and relations between theory and practice. Thus it will examine emerging discourses of world politics and indicate the challenges faced in coping with existing political practices, and the prospective patterns of conformity in future discourses and strategies in world politics. If the ‘linguistic turn’ revealed the constructed nature of politics, the international system is not necessarily amenable to reconstruction. In considering the possibility of alternative systems and structures, and making judgements about potential other worlds, it was noted in the previous chapter that there are advantages to Patomäki’s ‘critically reflective future-oriented perspective’ (2008: 80). In looking at shifting discourses, the aim is to relate theory and practice in world politics to the themes of coping and conformity through the lens of language. ‘The main problem for anyone concerned with the questions of political order and the articulations of moral choice (and the world teems with such questions) is how to devise a language in which these questions find their context’(Windsor 2002: 36).
