BRICS Message From South Africa

Mihail Nikolaevich Dudin,Ekaterina Petrovna Rusakova,Vitaliy Vasilievich Bezbakh,Evgenia Evgenevna Frolova,Natalya Zavyalova

doi:10.34069/ai/2020.26.02.60

Abstract

The paper features the data obtained from the analysis of a video strip with the help of ELAN 5.4, the free software developed by the experts from Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Language Archive, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The software enables to annotate video and audio strips, describing pauses, the duration of utterances, gestures, pronunciation and other linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The speaker in the video – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – delivers his official address to the leaders of the 10th BRICS leadership summit in Sandton, Johannesburg on July 26, 2018. BRICS is a powerful link of a global financial architecture. Its main targets are to mobilize resources for sustainable development projects of BRICS and to facilitate the global growth of multilateral and regional financial, educational and industrial institutions. The material and the speaker for the analysis belong to the domain of BRICS top level politics. South Africa was the main host of the leadership summit in 2018. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in his speech stressed the significance of the fourth industrial revolution highlighted by Professor Klaus Schawb at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016. The notion of the revolution appeared in the South African leader's address 7 times. Nevertheless, the authors of the paper see more messages hidden between the lines of the South African President's address. In the paper it is argued that BRICS architecture has a right to be interpreted as an attempt of keeping the world away from further plunging into environmental degradation, the development of critical thinking and innovation among BRICS citizens. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the method of pauses analysis to reveal a more complex mixture of speakers' visions. Long pauses are meaningful and extremely informative for discourse analysis. The data may be relevant for discourse analysis experts, political journalists, educators and copywriters.

Highlights

BRICS is a powerful link of a global political and economic architecture
There is a growing body of literature which indicates that pauses are extremely important for taking a breath while speaking, but they submit additional value to the mental units presented in discourse (Chattopadhyay et al, 2003; Grashchenkov et al, 2018)
After building a sphere of word annotation we got the data with the utterances silence duration (SD)

Summary

Introduction

BRICS is a powerful link of a global political and economic architecture. Its main targets are to mobilize resources for sustainable development projects of BRICS members and to facilitate the global growth of multilateral and regional financial institutions. The authors of the paper see more messages hidden between the lines of BRICS mission. In the paper it is argued that BRICS architecture has a right to be interpreted as an attempt of anti-anarchist strategy, preserving the idea of world order. The message brings BRICS in line with the course of Gabriel Syme, the main character of G.K. Chesterton's masterpiece “The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare”. The paper tries to interpret the importance of BRICS through the prism of T. Hobbes's belief in the necessity of a powerful political body for the sake of peace

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion