The prologue begins with the illustrative example of a single soldier whose attempts to rationalise the war in letters to his son reflect the broader themes of the book. This man’s child, Bentley Bridgewater, donated a sequence of letters written to him by his father to the National Army Museum. In these, the reader is confronted by a man looking to maintain his relationship with his distant son whilst also crafting a meaningful narrative around his war experiences. In short, it helps to expose the ways in which men sought to create or imagine agency. The preface moves on to explicate the central importance of narrative (and agency) in human cognition and sensemaking, exploring its role in psychology but also in its broader historical context.

Most metaphors are highly conventionalized expressions that are typically read and understood by native speakers effortlessly. For instance, while reading the brightest child in the classroom native speakers naturally understand that the speaker is not referring to a child who is literally shiny, but rather, a smart child.

Non-native speakers and language learners, however, may find some metaphoric expressions difficult to understand, if expressed in a language that they do not master fluently. Moreover, they may try to use conventional metaphoric expressions translated directly from their own native or first language, into another language. This can create problems in intercultural settings, where the expression may sound unheard before, and possibly unclear. For instance, the arguably unclear expression climbing up on mirrors is actually a direct translation of a highly conventional Italian metaphoric expression, frequently used to say “finding excuses”. In this chapter I elaborate on the way in which metaphoric expressions are understood, and how such comprehension processes vary in relation with metaphor conventionality, aptness and deliberateness. I then take these observations into the field of intercultural communication, explaining how the pragmatics of metaphor comprehension may be affected by intercultural settings.

This chapter uses the broken, fragmented and very personal views of Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) members collected during the Juba Peace Talks to show why individuals within the LRA/M embraced the notion of peace with ambiguity. Personal stories give an insight into how LRA/M members experience the day-to-day realities of their often-shifting identities, expressing an ambiguity vis-à-vis being an actor in war and in peace. Some of this ambiguity stems from the history of the conflict. That peace is ambiguous, for LRA/M members question a range of common notions in scholarship and practice, where often an unquestioned assumption persists that conflict actors ultimately are willing to sacrifice their own position for peace. This assumption fails to capture the experience of the LRA/M in the peace talks. The chapter asks the broader question of how to reconcile the pursuit of change through a peace process with the individual loss of status, control and power. While communal benefits of peace might be clear, for individuals recasting themselves in a peace process that continues to work along entrenched power dynamics means loss of status and power in a system where power relations remain unchanged.