Living the Void. New Authoritarianism, Psychosocial Defense Mechanisms and the Inability of Learning from Experience in the 21st Century

The paper addresses a well-documented genre of Russian canned jokes from a socio-pragmatic perspective. The goal of the paper is twofold: firstly, it aims at examining a relatively new phenomenon of telling jokes in public political discourse. Secondly, it argues that jokes – a typical example of a non-bona fide genre – can nevertheless be used to convey bona fide messages. As a specific sphere of communication public political discourse incorporates official interaction of professional politicians as well as publicly expressed attitudes of ordinary people. Because jokes capture our experience and reflect ongoing social processes, modern Russian political discourse in many of its forms eagerly employs the genre. But, whenever a joke is used in the official political communication, we face the discrepancy between the premise of the bona fide mode of political discourse and non-seriousness of jokes. On the surface telling jokes in political discourse might seem to be a temporal switch from the bona fide to the non-bona fide mode of communication. However, the content of canned jokes told by politicians reveals deep social implications: for instance, Vladimir Putin’s frequent references to Soviet realia are signs of superiority and control over the situation. Jokes told by Putin’s opponents, on the one hand, reveal disappointment; on the other, they are part of the struggle for power. Telling jokes in public political discourse shows that the borderline between two modes of communication – bona fide and non-bona fide – is fuzzy since jokes transmit serious messages for the participants of political communication.

Cognitive linguistic researches basically place metaphors as tool and as a cognitive ability to join the motivation and the real message they convey on one hand, and the textual analysis which serves to view metaphor as a result of the cultural and communication experience in expressing attitudes motivated by previously acquired knowledge. The use of the conceptual and conventional metaphor expressions in the public (political) discourse through examples in the Macedonian language portrays the conceptual integration as an inevitable approach in the interpretation of the metaphor in a minimal context. The examples of metaphors are increasingly present at time of elections. What is characteristic of the Macedonian political discourse is that during the last six years there is continuity in the dynamics. The appearance of the metaphors is integrated within the rhetoric strategy, which appears to be effective. There is a selection and a qualitative analysis of the metaphors in the Macedonian language which are used in the public (political) discourse.

The article argues that notwithstanding politicians’ desire to conceal from the public parts of the content of their indoor discussions, we nevertheless find ‘traces’ of their closed door debates in their public addresses. The article suggests that we need to regard at least some of these traces as an inevitable part of the process of constructing political discourse. It provides a comparative analysis of in-camera and public political discourse in Israel, suggesting techniques for identifying unintentional disclosure of information. These techniques are applied to cases drawn from Israeli politics in which politicians have sought to conceal information in public and semi-public forums. Such scrutiny can not only help to sharpen our discernment of the hidden voices in political discourse, but also to understand a crucial mechanism for the construction of borders between confidential and public political discourse.

On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religion, undermining the ethos of secularism as it is expressed in the Australian Constitution. It also – arguably – impacts upon the citizenship rights of Australian Muslims in so far as citizenship presents not just as a formal set of rights accorded to an individual but also to democratic participation: the ability of citizens to enjoy those rights at a substantive level. Based on the findings of research into how Australian Muslims and members of the broader community are responding to the political and media discourses on terrorism, this article examines the impact of these discourses on how Muslims are practicing citizenship and re-defining an Australian Muslim identity.

‘Moderate Islam’

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Social media in recent times has proven to be extremely persuasive in influencing the public’s opinion on political affairs. Since 2007, election campaigns have actively utilized several social media platforms in Kenya for communicating with, mobilizing, and organizing supporters. Politicians and political activists along with their parties make maximum use of it to interact and provide civic education to the public. However, few written materials are available on how Kenyan youth, particularly those who live in Kiambu County, use social media for political engagement. The objective of this research is therefore to explore patterns as well as practices characterizing social media use by young people in Kiambu County and how this affects their political involvement and discourse. This research is guided by Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere, which asserts that public political discourse that is free from government interference is important for creating functional democracies. Social media, which acts as a public sphere, can allow the youth to engage in political discussions and other civic activities. The research employs a descriptive research design, utilizing an online survey as the primary tool for data collection, administered via Survey Monkey. The research’s target population includes young people enrolled in institutions of higher learning in Kiambu County who use social media for communication. The sample size was determined based on the number of university students in Kiambu County. It utilized stratified random sampling on a target population of 115,330 to draw a sample of 380 youths using a Survey Monkey online sample calculator with a 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error. Initially, a pilot study was conducted on 10% of the sample, which is 38 respondents, to ascertain the reliability of the research instruments, eventually, from the 342 surveys sent out, 224 were completed and returned. For data analysis, Microsoft Excel was utilized in coding and organizing the data to create tables and graphs. The findings showed that X was the respondents' most used platform for political discourse. Most respondents were aware of and engaged in political discussions on social media, and believed that social media influenced their political attitudes and beliefs. Although most viewed social media as a source of civic education, they were skeptical about its reliability due to misinformation. The study concludes that many youths in Kiambu County are actively participating in political discussions online and therefore it recommends that better education should be provided to help the youth discern credible information from misinformation. Additionally, interventions should be established to curb digital crimes like cyberbullying and online fraud.

The paper deals with public political discourse as presented in official speeches at the UN General Assembly sessions. I argue that main approaches to discourse studies may be defined as analysis of topic, institutional structure, tonality and performative meaning of communication. Three main types of addressees in public political discourse are singled out: general public, basic opponents and professional interpreters. Usually orators emphasize the priorities of humankind when analyzing the world political situation but sometimes they make accent on the problems of their own states or regional interaction. Stylistic and rhetorical format of official presentations at the UN mostly corresponds to norms of diplomatic interaction but sometimes it deliberately deviates from such norms which proves that media discourse with its entertaining techniques gradually infiltrates new areas of communication. Political speech tonality is the most important priority indicator of possible practical actions the world powers may take in their international policy.

This chapter considers political discourse as a site for the analysis of socially conditioned variation. It problematizes the assumption that public political discourse is a monolithic genre of speech and that political speeches constitute a singular style. Just as several contextual styles and frames of interaction emerge in a sociolinguistic interview, contexts like political debates, speeches, and interviews also contain constantly shifting frames, alignments, and identity positions that are reflected in the linguistic detail of politicians’ speech. Furthermore, the public nature of political discourse makes it amenable to extraction and replaying across various traditional and social media outlets and modalities. When political speeches are excerpted and replayed in these various contexts, specific linguistic forms can take on new social meanings. A case study of a 2015 late-night interview with then presidential candidate Donald Trump is provided as an illustrative example to underscore the importance of interactional context and the “quotability” of the speaker when considering the emergence of new sociolinguistic variables and the shifting meaning of established variables over time, within and beyond the boundaries of political performance.

The aim of the study is to build a model of political discourse to describe its place in the taxonomy of discursive practices from the perspective of linguistics. The scientific novelty lies in identifying the characteristics of political discourse not as a separate type of discourse, but as a meta-discourse combining several types of discourse at its various levels and covering many spheres of human activity. As a result of studying the definitions of the term political discourse and the existing classifications of discourses, a nuclear-peripheral model of political discourse has been proposed, which consists of four shells, where the central place belongs to political communication as a tool of struggle for political power, academic political discourse is located in the nuclear zone, public political discourse is found in the near periphery of the model, while the periphery of the model includes the discourse of recipients of political messages. The paper describes the correlations of the shells of the model of political discourse with other types of discourse, such as ideological, legal, social, economic, mass media, artistic, business, academic, virtual, scientific, conversational and everyday discourse.

The article examines a problem of the conceptual framework for Globalization in English-language public political discourse in the early 2000s. This framework correlates with different phases of Globalization as a political and economic project. The study identifes strategies for representing the conceptual framework in public political discourse based on typical Anglo-American rhetorical style and it takes into account current geopolitical situation and psychology of the target audience for American politicians at the beginning of the 21st century. It is worth mentioning that globalization, grounded by the theory of neoliberal economic development, was the process where economic interests of Anglo-Saxon elite intersected with political ones, claiming to build a new model of the world order. In the context of rapid and growing changes in public consciousness and the political situation, certain strategies were developed to influence public opinion all around the world and make people believe that Globalization is a purposeful process that brings clear and confdent leadership against the background of general instability and chaotic changes. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifc features of the conceptual framework for Globalization in the lexical system of the English language that resulted from a new type of social construct having been developed, followed by modifcation in discursive practice of political communication. Thus the paper goes into the mechanisms of how social experience changes being informationally assimilated through linguistic signs, as well as the way the information received through cognitive activity communication is modifed. Conclusions are drawn regarding the world picture being reflected in Anglo-Saxon political communication. In particular, it is noted that typical Anglo-Saxon political discourse in the early 2000s was replenished with new concepts of global studies, processed in accordance with the desire of the elite to lead at the cross-border level, to remove class conflicts from view, and to turn the world development towards the interests of invisible capital travelling without barriers.

The physical environment is the space in which people with a disability participate in the public sphere. The community provides a suitable unit of analysis for investigating the interaction between the physical environment and persons with a disability because it is the common space in which public participation is played out. The places, physical features, structures and objects that constitute the physical environment bear the inscription of the social, political and economic environments. The physical environment reciprocally influences the social, political and economic environments, as well as the perceptions of participants in the public sphere. Community receptivity is a concept that links the physical and social environment in relation to community readiness to support the public participation of persons with a disability. Results of a recent community-based program of research in the USA that developed and tested measures of community receptivity to people with a physical mobility limitation are reported. Implications of this research are discussed together with suggestions for future research.

The purpose of the article is to make a hypothesis about the perspectives of category «system-tradition» at the making of public discourse in the modern Russia. The significance of theme is related to the importance of value turn of public policy, to the development of humanitarian innovations approved with traditional Russian values. Article contains the review about theoretical studies of political values by modern Russian scientists. In author view the monograph by Aver'yanov V.V. «Tradition and dynamic conservatism» is more significant and has defined the vectors of academic discourse. There is the earlier own article by author in the same way: «The kinds of value conflicts during the changing of state policy paradigm and governance». Author researches the phenomenon of modern political public discourse using the concept «tradition-system» and points out possibilities of axiological approach to the field of public policy and public administration. The methodology and methods of this study are comparative approach, axiological approach, content analysis, analogy method, system analysis, SWOT-analysis. Results: there is the opened and approved interconnection between the concept of «tradition-system» and the dynamics of political public discourse, there is the actual science issue relating to the forming of the basis of public administration system with traditional political values and other values, also there is the assessment of methodology situation about the using of concept «tradition-system» in the public administration field and in the public policy field. The theoretical significance of the work lies in using the concept «system-tradition» by author to make and use the system value analysis of political public discourse and public governance. The practical significance of the work is providing the research of traditional Russian values in the public administration system in the Russian Federation.

In my response to Kevin Carnahan, I explain the concept of religion that I have been working with in my writings on the place of religious reasons in public political discourse. While acknowledging that religion is often privatized, my concern has been with religion as a way of life. It is religion so understood that raises the most serious issues concerning the role of religion in public discourse. In my response to Erik A. Anderson, I go beyond what I have previously said about the role of religious reasons in public discourse. As an alternative to Rawlsian public reason, I argue that the essence of liberal democracy is that every citizen is to have equal political voice. I go on to consider what it is to exercise one’s equal political voice as a moral engagement.

Political power and its exertion by various agencies of politics (i.e. politicians, civil servants, political institutions) can be described as a kind of symbolic action (cf. Edelmann 1964, 1971). Social and political reality, its perception or constitution by participants of politics (politicians and citizens), is shaped and determined by communication and its means. That is, it is shaped by linguistic expressions provided by language of public discourse. This language opens and restricts due to rules of its linguistic signs possibilities of constituting symbolic meaning and sense within a range of socially accepted definitions of political and social reality. Linguistic sense within a discourse can only be socially effective if it is an intersubjectively accepted sense. The constitution of public sense as a part of process of linguistic communication is an important part of linguistic action. This (or semiotic) constitution of public sense can determine which social and political events and facts are accepted (and with which connotations) as a part of social reality, which are existent (in a certain sense of that term) and which are not. In other possibilities of linguistic signs correspond to form (the view) of reality admitted by society. Politicians or political agencies wanting to influence publicly accepted view of political reality will try to dominate linguistic possibilities within discourse of politics (cf. Edelman 1964; Mey 1979, 423). Thus language (especially semantics of political terminology) becomes a means of political action: so-called semantic struggles are born (cf. Dieckmann 1975). To succeed in determining social interpretation (or definition) of political reality can be seen as a result of such struggles. With regard to important role of dominating interpretations of social reality there must be a strong interest for bearers of political power to defend their interpretation against competing interpretations. / This includes interest to maintain belief that there is only o n e reality and that this reality is same as official reality defined in political discourse. This also implies, that belief has to be maintained that only words (i.e. their meanings) used by bearers of political power denote (one and only) reality. Competing definitions and interpretations of political events and facts have to be denounced as wrong: as the wrong use of words, as ideological speech, as part of a struggle (whereas one's own speech is declared to be correct use of words denoting real reality) and so on (cf. Smith 1973, 105; Lasswell 1968, 12). Semantic strategies take place in public political discourses, in newspapers, tvand radio-news, interviews with politicians, etc. The function of such media for public political discourse is not only to give information about political events, but, more than this, to offer interpretations which are not dangerous for stability of political power. The official interpretation must be on market of public opinion before competing interpretations can occur and be effective. Interpretation of reality by means of language of politics works by dominating selection of certain linguistic ex121