Abstract

Taking"speech act"theory as its starting point, the article reconsiders sources of(in)security culture, and argues that discourse itself as social acts can be a source of (in) security culture. Treating language as a major unit of analysis in the politics of security is to go beyond the conventional view that external material factors are taken assources of (in) security culture. Politics of (in) security, seemingly"objective"and"natural", is in fact the product socially and discursively constructed and interp reted by nation states. Discourse as social p ractice, in turn,can give rise to hostility and conflicts between nation2states. The study of Bush Administration's rhetoric of"axis of evil"shows that there has been a causal relationship between the imp roper use of language and the creation of tensions among the nation2states.

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