When neighbors feud, lovers quarrel, or nations war, the predictable rem­edy prescribed by the voices of reason is communication.

The prevail­ing view is that, faced with conflict, communicating is always the right thing to do: the U.N. Security Council encourages hostile countries to “hold talks,” and marriage counselors advise quarreling couples to “express their feel­ings.” So commonplace is the prescription that advice to the contrary seems anomalous; it’s difficult to imagine the Secretary General imploring hostile nations to refrain from dialogue.

An attempt to answer such questions is the main burden of this chapter. In large part, the answers derive from considering what communication entails and what its instantiation precludes, that is, what it brings to, and demands of, particular situations. To understand the complex interplay between communi­cation and conflict, we describe four paradigms of communication—four mod­els of the communication process—and consider how each relates to conflict.¹ We briefly examine communicative mishaps that are potential sources of con­flict and consider how and why communication can ameliorate conflict. Finally, we discuss some inherent limitations of communication as a peacemaker, limi­tations that result from the realization that understanding, the cardinal goal of communication, does not imply agreement, as Bierce’s definition illustrates.