The Language of Peacebuilding: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Philippine’s Department of Education Peace Framework

Abstract

Peacebuilding initiatives have been an important agenda of education particularly in post-conflict areas, where schools serve as agents for the promotion of peace, and the prevention of future conflict, operationalized through a peace framework. While focusing on the delivery of educational services, peace frameworks are undeniably designed by the values and priorities of the dominant groups or institutions, discursively presenting peacebuilding as a mean of social transformation, appearing neutral and ideal, while in fact its definition, direction, role, and outcomes are carried out and controlled by power, interests, and ideologies. This creates gap in the understanding of institutionalized peacebuilding, questioning what these initiatives truly serves in education sector. Using the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and the Three-Dimensional Model of Fairclough, the study examined the Department of Education (DepEd) Peace Framework, known as the Balangkas ng Nagkakaisang Sambayanan (BANSA). Findings revealed that the framework’s textual features are ideologically motivated to construct a concept of peacebuilding as depoliticized, institutionalized, and bureaucratized initiative. Through its lexical and grammatical choices, the DepEd Peace Framework is presented as technical, administrative, and ruled-based agenda, removing a sense of political connection, while institutional power is exercised. By doing so, peace framework is directed to reinforce a governed-rule peacebuilding initiative, regarded as a transformative mechanism, operationalized through DepEd policies and education programs.