Addressing Global Challenges from a Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

Globally, human beings have always faced numerous problems, such as drought, floods, wars, etc. At this dawn of the twenty first century, the world is experiencing unprecedented challenges which may likely get worse. Climate change, wars with their millions of refugees, natural and man-made disasters, epidemics, food security, deforestation, and political disturbances are among the most recurrent problems. Many solutions have been tried with little or no success, leaving many of the problems intact. Important decisions are generally taken without enough discussions and the participation of all the stakeholders. Huge funds are sometimes spent by non-experts of the situation with no concrete solutions. From a theoretical perspective, this paper draws examples from Cameroon and Africa to highlight the importance of language and dialogue as means to solve some of the global challenges.