Chapter published in:
Political Discourse in Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe
Edited by Martina Berrocal and Aleksandra Salamurović
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 84] 2019
► pp. 69–92

Chapter 4
Gay rights as a symbol of ideological struggles between Russia and the West

A socio-cognitive discourse analysis

This chapter will investigate how two news articles, from the British Guardian and from Russia Today, report on the issue of gay rights in Russia, as mentioned in a press conference given by Russian president Putin in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The analysis will employ a socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies. Similarities and differences in social actor representation and cohesion in the two texts will be explained as illustration that both Putin and the writers of the articles seek to engage in strategic ideological communication to effect social categorisation, construct in-groups and out-groups, and design their texts for particular audiences. The findings will be discussed against a background of increasing geopolitical and ideological tensions between Russia and some Western countries.
Keywords: cohesion, critical discourse studies, gay rights, ideology, media discourse, Russia, social actor representation, social categorisation, social cognition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Social cognition and critical discourse studies
    • 2.1Social cognition
    • 2.2A framework for socio-cognitive critical discourse studies
  • 3.Background to the analysed material
  • 4.Sample analysis
    • 4.1Data
    • 4.2Text analysis
      • 4.2.1Social actor representation
      • 4.2.2Cohesion
    • 4.3Context analysis
      • 4.3.1Discourse practice
      • 4.3.2Socio-political context
  • 5.Implications
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.84.04kol
References
“
About RT”. n.d. Available at https://​www​.rt​.com​/about​-us/, retrieved 2 August 2016.
Abrams, Dominic, and Michael A. Hogg
2006 Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
“
Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of Murdered Russian Spy” 21 January 2016 Available at http://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/uk​-19647226, retrieved 1 August 2016
Bodenhausen, Galen V., Kang, Sonia K., and Destiny Peery
2012 “Social Categorization and the Perception of Social Groups.” In The SAGE Handbook of Social Cognition, ed. by Susan T. Fiske, and C. Neil Macrae, 311–330. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bolshakova, Anastasia
2016 “Russia as the Other: Corpus Investigation of Olympic Host Construction in The New York Times .” Journal of Language and Politics 15 (4): 446–467. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, Marilynn B., and Wendi Gardner
1996 “Who Is This ‘We’? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71 (1): 83–93. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cap, Piotr
2013 Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Aengus
2016 State-sponsored Homophobia: A World Survey on Sexual Orientation Laws: Criminalisation, Protection and Recognition. 11th ed. Available at http://​ilga​.org​/downloads​/02​_ILGA​_State​_Sponsored​_Homophobia​_2016​_ENG​_WEB​_150516​.pdf, retrieved 5 August 2016.
Chilton, Paul
2014 Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chojnicka, Joanna
2015 “Homophobic Speech in Post-socialist Media: A Preliminary Typology of Homophobic Manipulative Discourse.” Journal of Language and Sexuality 4 (1): 138–173. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crapanzano, Vincent
2017 “The Friendly Other.” In Anthropology and alterity: Responding to the Other, ed. byBernhard Leistle, 72–88. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cuddy, Amy J. C., Susan T. Fiske, and Peter Glick
2007 “The BIAS Map: Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (4): 631–648. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2008 “Warmth and Competence as Universal Dimensions of Social Perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 40: 61–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dirven, Rene, Frank Roslyn, and Martin Pütz
2003 “Introduction: Categories, Cognitive Models and Ideologies.” In Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings, ed. by Rene Dirven, Frank Roslyn, and Martin Pütz, 1–21. Berlin: de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2010 Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., and Shelley E. Taylor
1984 Social Cognition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Ford, Zack
2014 “9 States with Anti-Gay Laws That Aren’t That Different from Russia’s.” Available at http://​thinkprogress​.org​/lgbt​/2014​/02​/03​/3241421​/9​-state​-gay​-propaganda​-laws/, retrieved 5 August 2016.
Graff, Agnieszka
2006 “We Are (Not All) Homophobes: A Report from Poland.” Feminist Studies 32 (2): 434–449. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John, and Brian Robert
2013 Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2013 “Cognitive Models and Conceptualisation in the Context of Political Protests.” In Discourse in Context, ed. by John Flowerdew, 159–183. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch
2014 License to Harm: Violence and Harassment Against LGBT People and Activists in Russia. Available at https://​www​.hrw​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/reports​/russia1214​_ForUpload​.pdf, retrieved 1 August 2016.
International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)
2016 The ILGA-RIWI 2016 Global Attitudes Survey on LGBTI People. Available at http://​ilga​.org​/downloads​/07​_THE​_ILGA​_RIWI​_2016​_GLOBAL​_ATTITUDES​_SURVEY​_ON​_LGBTI​_PEOPLE​.pdf, retrieved 5 August 2016.
Jost, John T., Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Brian A. Nosek
2004 “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” Political Psychology 25 (6): 881–919. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koller, Veronika
2012 “How to Analyse Collective Identity in Discourse: Textual and Contextual Parameters.” Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 5 (2): 19–38. Available at http://​www​.lancaster​.ac​.uk​/fass​/journals​/cadaad​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2015​/01​/Volume​-5​_Koller​.pdf
2014 “Cognitive Linguistics and Ideology.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Jeannette Littlemore, and John R. Taylor, 234–252. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Krzyżanowska, Natalia
2010 “Denying the Right to Speak in Public: Sexist and Homophobic Discourses in Post-1989 Poland.” In The Post-Communist Condition, ed. by Aleksandra Galasińska, and Dariusz Galasiński, 105–129. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kuzio, Taras
2016 “Nationalism and Authoritarianism in Russia: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Communist and Post-communist Studies 49 (1): 1–11. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Macgilchrist, Felicitas
2011 Journalism and the Political: Discursive Tensions in News Coverage of Russia. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nickmanová, Simona
2014 What metaphors are used by Russian politicians to frame the homosexuality discourse in Russia? Case study of discussions in Russian State Duma on the draft law that bans promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors. Unpublished MA dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Nordling, Linda
2015 “African Academics Challenge Homophobic Laws.” Nature 522 (7555): 135–136. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Opratko, Benjamin
2016 “‘Devils from Our Past’: Racist Historicism in Contemporary Anti-Muslim Discourse.” Paper presented at the 3rd ISA Forum of Sociology, Vienna/Austria, 10–14 July.
Pew Research Center
2013 The Global Divide on Homosexuality. Available at http://​www​.pewglobal​.org​/files​/2014​/05​/Pew​-Global​-Attitudes​-Homosexuality​-Report​-REVISED​-MAY​-27​-2014​.pdf, retrieved 1 August 2016.
Reddy, Vasu
2002 “Perverts and Sodomites: Homophobia as Hate Speech in Africa.” Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 20 (3): 163–175. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Scheller-Boltz, Dennis, and Althaler, Mathias
2016 “Die Konstruktion von Homosexualität im russischen Mediendiskurs [The Construction of Homosexuality in Russian Media Discourse].” In New Approaches to Gender and Queer Research in Slavonic Studies, ed. by Dennis Scheller-Boltz, 185–200. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Semino, Elena, and Mick Short
2004 Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stout, Brett E.
2012 “Russia’s Closet: The Politics Behind a Ban on Gay ‘Propaganda’”. The Advocate 30 May. Available at http://​www​.advocate​.com​/politics​/commentary​/2012​/03​/30​/russias​-closet​-politics​-behind​-russias​-ban​-gay​-propaganda, retrieved 1 August 2016.
Tajfel, Henri
1957 “Value and the Perceptual Judgment of Magnitude.” Psychological Review 64 (3): 192–204. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1974 Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour. Los Angeles: Sage. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tubaltseva, Svitlana
2014 The Analysis of the Thematic Organization and Appraisal in the News Reports on 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the British, American and European Media. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Portsmouth.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A.
1994 “Discourse and Cognition in Society.” In Communication Theory Today, ed. by David Crowley, and David Mitchell, 107–126. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
2008 Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo
2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
VCIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center)
2015 “Same-Sex Marriage: Pro et Contra.” Available at http://​wciom​.com​/index​.php​?id​=61​&uid​=1129, retrieved 1 August 2016.
Wyatt, Caroline
2015 “Arrests at Moscow Gay Pride Rally” 30 May. Available at http://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/world​-europe​-32945434, retrieved 10 August 2016.
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Berrocal, Martina, Michael Kranert, Paola Attolino, Júlio Antonio Bonatti Santos, Sara Garcia Santamaria, Nancy Henaku, Aimée Danielle Lezou Koffi, Camilla Marziani, Viktorija Mažeikienė, Dasniel Olivera Pérez, Kumaran Rajandran & Aleksandra Salamurović
2021. Constructing collective identities and solidarity in premiers’ early speeches on COVID-19: a global perspective. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8:1 Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.