Official Political Discourse Research Articles

The discourse and practices of Polish migration policy during the COVID-19 pandemic – economisation as a form of emergency governance

The existing literature points to securitisation as a dominant form of emergency governance emerging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, also in relation to migration. However, another important way of framing migration during the pandemic is in terms of economisation. This article aims to analyse the rationale underpinning Polish immigration policy during COVID-19 with a focus on different forms of economisation: macro-economisation, which prioritises economic growth over other socially important issues; and substantive economisation, which centres the needs of a population during a given historical moment. Based on desk and qualitative research, including analysis of official documents and media coverage as well as in-depth expert interviews, we argue that the logics of both kinds of economisation can be discerned in Poland’s immigration policy. Our overall conclusion is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, and despite strong anti-immigrant rhetoric in official political discourse, Poland’s immigration policy prioritised the interests of the national economy and labour market over strategies of security and social control.

Upotreba istorije, poricanje zločina i koncept nekažnjivosti u Republici Srpskoj (1992–2022)

The article analyzes how Republika Srpska publicly articulated its stance regarding the July 1992 massacre in Srebrenica, which the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia both classified as genocide. It assesses how this Bosnian entity grapples with and communicates its response to this internationally recognized atrocity within the public domain. The conflicting conclusions of three reports on Srebrenica—issued by the Bureau of the RS Government for Relations with the Hague Tribunal of the Government of Republika Srpska (2002), the Commission for the Investigation of Events in and around Srebrenica from July 10 to 19, 1995 (2004), and the Independent International Commission for Research on the Suffering of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region in the Period 1992–1995 (2021) — illustrate the ongoing initiatives of local communities to memorialize the 1992–1995 war and reflect shifts in official political discourse.

Internationalizing the Revolution: Veterans and Transnational Cultures of Memory and Solidarity between Yugoslavia and Algeria

AbstractThe article examines the role of memory in Yugoslav exchanges with the postcolonial world, focusing on the agency of Yugoslav war veterans and their involvement with Algeria. During decolonization, Yugoslav institutions and associations stood in solidarity with anti-colonial liberation movements. Former Partisans were critical agents of Yugoslav internationalism, and the memory of the People's Liberation War (Narodnooslobodilački rat, NOR), which dominated the Yugoslav memory culture, played a connecting role in this context. The article focuses on the transnational aspect of the Yugoslav war memory, an intrinsically everyday phenomenon, exploring its exportation and internationalization. Applying the transnational memory framework to relations between Yugoslav Partisans and Algerian mujahideen, the article illuminates the twofold role of memory: as narratives of the shared past, and as the transfer of knowledge in war commemoration. Firstly, Yugoslav veterans identified with the anti-colonial struggle as comparable to their own. This was not only an official political discourse, but was also shared by Yugoslav society at large. Secondly, they engaged in transfers of knowledge in memory work, providing expertise and training to Algerian veterans. The People's Liberation War memory constituted a key aspect of everyday life in Yugoslav state socialism and veterans internationalized it, adding the dimension of personal war memory. The exchanges of knowledge illuminate the transfer from the discursive level of the shared past to the sphere of commemorative policies and practices that reshaped cultures of war remembrance. The article represents a starting point of a global history of the Yugoslav revolution and a transnational history of memory from the perspective of anti-colonial solidarities.

Confucianism, Business Leaders, and Party-State Power in Contemporary China

From the beginning of the twenty-first century onwards, China has witnessed a Confucian revival in the business world. Often associated with a revitalisation of cultural tradition among the population, this new trend is characterised by a resurgence of the Confucian merchant (儒商, rushang) model, an ancient term that originally referred to a new type of merchants in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), who were close to literati circles. In parallel with this increasing interest in Confucianism by many economic elites, there has been an integration of certain elements of Confucianism into official political discourse through various moral edification campaigns. Based on an analysis of this new official discourse and the fieldwork we carried out between 2016 and 2020 within three private companies, this article aims to analyse interactions between three elements: Confucianism, party-state power, and business leaders claiming to be “Confucian.”

Discursive Approaches to the Reception of Non-EU Migrants in Polish Official Political Discourse

Discursive Approaches to the Reception of Non-EU Migrants in Polish Official Political Discourse

Practicing modernity at home: Expert discourses and women's narratives on household in late socialist Poland

AbstractThis article explores gendered notions of modernity in late socialist Poland in the context of the household. It examines the scenarios of modernity for the household that were developed by various expert bodies and popularised by the mass media, and women's memoirs written as competition entries that describe their everyday practices. The main aim of this analysis is to examine how the memoirists responded to expert discourses about gendered modernity at home. The article shows that although they appear to have understood how to produce their life stories to interweave their experiences with official political discourse, the memoirs can be considered a valuable source that describes how individuals understood modernity, and how expert discourses affected their value system.

THE LATEST SOCIOLINGUISTIC SURVEYS IN UKRAINE AS A DATABASE IN LINGUISTIC AND CONFLICT STUDIES

The object of this research is sociolinguistic surveys as a source of information in resolving linguistic conflicts, which we understand as a clash of national and linguistic interests of representatives of different language communities due to the inequality of language statuses within a bilingual or multilingual society. The subject of the study is the language issue in Ukraine, which has been used by political elites during election campaigns throughout the years of independence to mobilise their electorate and speculate. According to many researchers, the language issue in Ukraine is directly related to the definition of national identity, so sociolinguistic surveys include questions about national identity, among other things. The purpose of this paper is to try to determine the correlations between the political and ideological agenda in the country and the results of the polls. Of course, the Russian aggression could not but affect the language issue in the country. Along with the influence of official political and ideological discourses, the so-called agency is beginning to influence language policy in the country, as language activists or agents are involved in language disputes, which has been the subject of separate scientific studies in European and domestic works. Results. By comparing the results of sociolinguistic surveys throughout the years of independence, scholars are trying to identify social trends in resolving language conflicts. However, political elites continue to use the language issue to divide society, despite the fact that sociolinguistic data show that the language issue was secondary for Ukrainians, at least in the pre-war period. Conclusions. Even the optimistic results of the surveys, which do confirm the existence of certain, but not so significant, differences between the linguistic orientations of different parts of the Ukrainian population, do not provide guarantees of conflict-free coexistence on linguistic grounds, since competition between political elites can again present the language issue as a conflictogenic one and people’s views as polarised and uncompromising through the construction of relevant political and ideological discourses.

Economic Rationality and Socio-Technological Fantasy Soviet Oil and its Geochronological Formation (A. Konchalovsky’s The Siberiade, 1978)

The contradictions in the development of the late Soviet oil industrial complex can be described as a gap between the energy concentrated in this natural resource and the entropy it generated in the context of the planned socialist economy of the 1970s and 1980s. The tension that arose from this gap between the modernization potential of oil and the conservative economic and socio-political trends that arose in connection with the growing dependence on resources produced unexpected effects in the space of Soviet culture. These effects were associated with intense mythologizing and fetishization of oil, numerous examples of which can be found in Soviet literature and cinema of that era. In consequence of the enormous pressure that drove ideas and conceptions regarding oil out of official political and economic discourse and into the social imaginary, the products of their cultural refining broke the artistic and ideological norms of official Soviet culture, concentrating in themselves various forms of utopian and mystical, historiosophical and metaphysical meanings. As one of the most powerful symptoms of these phenomena, we analyze the film by Andron Konchalovsky The Siberiade (1978).

Parodies in Chinese Government Work Reports

Abstract This study accounts for how parody enters such official political discourse as Chinese Government Work Reports (GWRs). It quantitatively and qualitatively studies parodies from 44 GWRs (1978–2021) via the convergence-economy, variation-effectiveness, and relevance model. Our findings are: 1) parodies have appeared more and more frequently in GWRs over the last 44 years; 2) word parodies occur more frequently in GWRs than phrase, sentence, and paragraph parodies; 3) brand-new parodies, of higher pragma-rhetorical values, are used in GWRs; 4) parodies tend to reoccur mimetically once utilized, for ready-made security and effectiveness; and 5) the increasing frequency of parodies is caused by the politicians’ quest for their identification-oriented “markedness effects.”

Features of the discursive dominants in the political communication

The article considers the discursive dominants represented in the political Internet discourse and official political discourse. Subjective (characteristic and axiological), actional and spatial dominants are analyzed. The patterns of foregrounding certain situation components are established. The aim of the present study is to analyze foregrounding of certain discursive dominants depending on the political communication type. The authors set the following tasks to achieve this goal: to study the subject-related theoretical material, to analyze the frequency of the discursive dominants in the political communication, to identify the realization features of the speaker's intention in the political Internet discourse and in the official political discourse.The material for the analysis were the US Presidents utterances in the social network, as well as official documents of the Presidential Actions, posted on the website of the US Government. The authors of the article use various methods, including observation and description, comparative method, contextual analysis, discourse analysis. The study scientific novelty lies in the comparison of two different spheres of the political communication. In the process of discourse interaction certain discursive dominants appear. Politicians statements in social networks often contain an actualized subjective dominant, which allows to affect the information perception by the recipient. At the same time, in the texts of official documents, the actional dominant is brought to the forefront, which is directly related to the participants actions.

РЕВОЛЮЦИИ И «ЦВЕТНЫЕ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ»: ОБЩЕЕ И ОСОБЕННОЕ

Color revolution is a term introduced and used by the mass media since around 2004 to describe various anti-regime protest movements and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government that took place in post-Soviet territory during late 20th — early 21st centuries. It should be noted that use of this term in the present-date media or official political discourse is not limited by the CIS region. Color revolutions that have become one of the most prominent political phenomena of the new millennium having affected many regions worldwide are not only a part of history, but also a material for active scientific reflection of the researchers and public persons in respect of preconditions and underlying causes of such phenomena, which problem becomes ever more topical in the modern world, whereas the so-called “forced democratization” with massive involvement of the up-to-date political technologies and techniques for achievement of the set goals serves as the pretext for interference into interior affairs of the sovereign states. Given that this concept is moving beyond the 21st century and it is possible to project it to somewhat earlier events, we may put a predictable question as to what exactly we mean by the “color revolution”, and in which way any given public unrest and power shift may be added to this group. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the patterns of the studied phenomenon related to destabilization of political environment in the country, explore its main signs and implementation models, specific aspects of the protest movement and power struggle. The article analyzes the theoretical concept of “color revolutions”, investigates whether it is reasonable to consider them as revolutions per se, reviews the new coup technologies in the modern political practices, and identifies their driving forces and mechanisms.

CHANGE IN NATIONAL SECURITY MARKERS IN OFFICIAL POLITICAL DISCOURSE: UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

Discourse analysis allows us to identify markers of change in values, which is a sign of democratic development. However, this does not mean a radical change in values, but rather their correlation with the economic, social, cultural dimensions of society. When it comes to national security as the value of the country, then here we can see the dichotomy of the collective “we” with the individualistic “I”. In democratic societies, the priority of national security is higher than the values of self-expression, while the authorities guarantee human rights and freedoms. 
 The study provides a theoretical analysis of the nature of official political discourse. The influence of discourse on the political system through the category of «security» is considered. At the first stage, the theoretical and methodological analysis is conducted in terms of social practice of G. Deleuze and M. Foucault. At the second stage, a comparative analysis of the concept of national security of Ukraine was conducted. At the third stage, markers of the value components of Ukraine’s national security were identified, which both presidents have used. This allowed us to understand the discourse practice of official political discourse as a strategy to influence the political system.

중국 ‘항미원조전쟁’ 기억의 소환과 굴절 - ‘인민전쟁’ 개념을 중심으로

The current Sino-US conflict brings the memory of The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (hereafter ‘The War’), which has been marginalized for many decades, back to the center of official political discourse. However, the newly returned narrative of The War faces a significant dilemma. As a trenchant event amidst the heist of the Cold War, the political gist of The War lies in the fact that it is a successor to the CCP’s ‘people’s war’ such as the Anti-Japanese War and the Liberation War. On the contrary, the narrative of The War in the 21st century no longer includes the concept of ‘people’s war’. Furthermore, it covertly reconstructs the political meaning of The War by stripping it of remnants of ‘people’s war’ and emphasizing party over people.

„Szocialista törvényesség” a Rákosi-korszak felsőoktatási fegyelmi eljárásaiban

’Socialist Legality’ of the Disciplinary Procedures in Institutions of Higher Education during the Rákosi Era
 
 The New Course, the de-Stalinization programme of Prime Minister Imre Nagy introduced the concept of ‘socialist legality’ in the summer of 1953 in the official political discourse. Without challenging the legitimacy of the Communist regime, it promised political easement, reduction of repression, as well as correction of unlawful acts that encouraged many formerly expelled students to appeal for revision of their cases by the Ministry of Education. The new mantra of ‘socialist legality’ allowed them to interpret their experience as violations of their rights, gave them rhetoric tools to motivate the Ministry and the hope of having some control over the unpredictable and arbitrary disciplinary procedures. Their submissions, however, based on a more rational, more fair, more righteous, but still somewhat ‘socialist’ understanding of legality. The willingness of the regime for a limited self-correction generated some level of trust in the central institutions of the party state, but the moving force of the concept of the ‘socialist legality’ showed itself more apparently, as the expectations about the legal remedy did not meet the reality. The lack of responsibility, the still arbitrary decisions and the stubborn adherence to the logic of class struggle made the newly chanted promises of the ‘socialist legality’ after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956) less believable. The need of legal remedy became evident which legitimized the individual experiences as violation of rights without formal institutional correction. Although driven by different motivations, the oddities of rehabilitation connected the ever-growing mass of people who demanded not only individual but systemic correction with ordinary participators of unlawful acts who showed themselves ready to draw moral conclusions of their decisions, however, did not want to bear the responsibility alone.

Evaluation in chinese and Russian official political discourses in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic (based on the speeches of the leaders of the PRC and the Russian Federation at the World Economic Forum 2021)

Evaluation in chinese and Russian official political discourses in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic (based on the speeches of the leaders of the PRC and the Russian Federation at the World Economic Forum 2021)

The ‘Pivot to the East‘ and China in Russian Discourse

ABSTRACT Using the approaches of critical geopolitics, the authors compare Russian official, expert and media discourses on Russian-Chinese relations and China including such issues as its domestic and foreign policies, its role in the world, economic development and military potential. To study the official political discourse, more than 300 official documents were collected, including speeches, presentations and interviews by Russian leaders from 2012 to 2019. The screening of the Vesti news programme at the “Russia-1” state federal TV channel served a basis for the media discourse analysis. A scrutiny of about 2,900 articles on China and Russian-Chinese relations found in course of screening of 2012–2019 issues of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a daily federal “intellectual” newspaper destined to highly educated audience that pays much attention to foreign policy, was selected as a source of information on the expert discourse. The authors conclude that there is a clear gap between the official and expert discourse on China. While most of the participants agree that there is no alternative to a partnership with the great eastern neighbour, many experts express their concerns about the growing asymmetry in the two countries’ potential. This difference arises from the lack of confidence at the grassroots level as well as from the fact that some Russian partners seek to excuse their failures by blaming them on China’s unwillingness to compromise. In conclusion the authors consider the influence that different discourses have on Russian public opinion using the results of national surveys and focus groups. They show that part of the elite itself, accustomed to certain doubts about the possibility of strategic cooperation with China, reproduces a sceptical attitude towards the Chinese partners.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic revisited in times of COVID-19: advocating for responsibility and rights in South African writing

ABSTRACT This paper examines two autobiographical responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa from the perspective of responsibility and rights. The analysis draws on interdisciplinary studies of the epidemic and its effects on South African communities. Memoirs by Edwin Cameron and Sister Abegail Ntleko address challenges in South Africa with regard to attitudes toward and treatment of HIV-infected people. Both writers use their texts to advocate for social and political responsibility and for the rights of those infected. Rian Malan’s essays function as a counterpoint, bringing into focus controversial questions about the role of funding and reliable statistics for the epidemic. The topic is relevant in a South African context where antiretroviral treatment was met with skepticism in official political discourse. Representations of responsibilities and rights as well as official responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been additionally reexamined in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving the epidemic renewed relevance.

Transgression, Resistance and Independent Art in Contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT This article draws on research in progress focusing on independent art in the Russian Federation. I am using the concept of independent art to mean art free from state control and established restrictive narratives. The Russian state pursues its interests by supporting or forbidding certain forms of art. Art that promotes values in opposition to the official political discourse does not have state support, moreover, it often risks being banned. Arguments presented below draw on the findings of fieldwork carried out in the Russian cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in June – August 2019, which included in-depth interviews with artists and others involved in the local art scenes. This article explores socially engaged artistic works with transgressive characteristics and their effect on the socio-political state of affairs.

Russian Working Class Youth Media Representation: The Discourse Analysis Experience

The objective of this research is to investigate the recent discursive turn in working class representation in the Russian media. The means of creation and translation of normative class patterns, stereotypes and political agency within Russian media have been studied using the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis. The empirical basis of the research is the textual transcripts of the key communicative events marking the working class as a political subject. The qualitative analysis allowed us to distinguish the rhetorical techniques and semiotic resources of working-class representation in the political field: thematic repertoire, format, practices which interlocutors use in addressing each other, language style and naming. It has been established that the forgotten concept of a “working class” was actualized and entrenched in the official political discourse in 2011. It was borrowed from left-wing political forces and re-assembled as one of the means of ruling class positioning in the 2011–2012 electoral cycle. Industrial working class representatives were included in public discourse as a part of the political staging, the consequences of which led to minor social changes. The populist discourse of working-class politicians as a “voice of common people” was constructed to oppose it to the protesting “creative class” threatening the main political force. The short-term political goal of power agents was to represent working-class people and youth especially as a political subject loyal to the existing regime, embedded into the current political system and ready to defend it if necessary. The nostalgic rhetorical technics were primarily used to re-launch “working class project”.
 Keywords: working class, working-class youth, discourse analysis, populism, political discourse

The ethical dilemma of citizenship by investment

The article reveals socio-philosophical basis for judging the phenomenon of the citizenship by investment in the creative society from the ethical perspective. Different ways of assessing the development of forms and content of the citizenship by investment as social and moral progress or regress are demonstrated. The paradoxical nature of the creative class choice between a sound possibility to invest into the beneficial citizenship and a necessity of its limitation from the moral point of European community view, expressed in public space and the EU official political discourse, is explicated.