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.
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
-
Appendix
References
“
About RT”. n.d. Available at
[URL], retrieved 2 August 2016.
Abrams, Dominic, and Michael A. Hogg
2006 Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge.
“
Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of Murdered Russian Spy”
21 January 2016 Available at
[URL], 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.
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.
Carroll, Aengus
2016 State-sponsored Homophobia: A World Survey on Sexual Orientation Laws: Criminalisation, Protection and Recognition. 11th ed. Available at
[URL], retrieved 5 August 2016.
Chilton, Paul
2014 Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crapanzano, Vincent
2017 “
The Friendly Other.” In
Anthropology and alterity: Responding to the Other, ed. by
Bernhard Leistle, 72–88. New York: Routledge.
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.
Cuddy, Amy J. C., Susan T. Fiske, and Peter Glick
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.
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.
Fairclough, Norman
2010 Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Longman.
Fiske, Susan T., and Shelley E. Taylor
1984 Social Cognition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Ford, Zack
2014 “
9 States with Anti-Gay Laws That Aren’t That Different from Russia’s.” Available at
[URL], retrieved 5 August 2016.
Graff, Agnieszka
2006 “
We Are (Not All) Homophobes: A Report from Poland.”
Feminist Studies 32 (2): 434–449.
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.
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.
Human Rights Watch
2014 License to Harm: Violence and Harassment Against LGBT People and Activists in Russia. Available at
[URL], 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
[URL], 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.
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
[URL]
Koller, Veronika
2014 “
Cognitive Linguistics and Ideology.” In
The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by
Jeannette Littlemore, and
John R. Taylor, 234–252. London: Bloomsbury.
Kuzio, Taras
2016 “
Nationalism and Authoritarianism in Russia: Introduction to the Special Issue.”
Communist and Post-communist Studies 49 (1): 1–11.
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.
Nordling, Linda
2015 “
African Academics Challenge Homophobic Laws.”
Nature 522 (7555): 135–136.
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.
“
Our audience story”
2013 Available at
[URL], retrieved 2 August 2016.
Pew Research Center
2013 The Global Divide on Homosexuality. Available at
[URL], 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.
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.
Semino, Elena, and Mick Short
2004 Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge.
Stout, Brett E.
2012 “
Russia’s Closet: The Politics Behind a Ban on Gay ‘Propaganda’”.
The Advocate
30 May. Available at
[URL], retrieved 1 August 2016.
Tajfel, Henri
1957 “
Value and the Perceptual Judgment of Magnitude.”
Psychological Review 64 (3): 192–204.
Tajfel, Henri
1974 Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour. Los Angeles: Sage.
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.
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.
van Dijk, Teun A.
2008 Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Leeuwen, Theo
2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
VCIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center)
2015 “
Same-Sex Marriage: Pro et Contra.” Available at
[URL], retrieved 1 August 2016.
Wyatt, Caroline
2015 “
Arrests at Moscow Gay Pride Rally”
30 May. Available at
[URL], retrieved 10 August 2016.
Cited by
Cited by 2 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
Kisić, Jelena Jorgačević & Aleksandra Salamurović
2023.
Migration Discourse in Serbian Media – Analysis of National Dailies Politika, Danas and Vecernje novosti. In
The Representation of REFUGEES and MIGRANTS in European National Media Discourses from 2015 to 2017 [
Linguistik in Empirie und Theorie/Empirical and Theoretical Linguistics, ],
► pp. 251 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 march 2024. 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.