Crisis as a need: embedded paradoxes of Russian official discourse
https://doi.org/10.31249/poln/2022.03.11
Abstract
Current paper is devoted to the problem of using two lexemes within the Russian official discourse, which have a great importance for the formation of a certain Russian people's attitude towards government bodies and even the Russian «authority» as it is. These are the lexemes of «crisis» and «stability» that are regularly used within official discourse; over the past decades, this appeals did not acquire a clear content, but laid the foundation for the continuing reproduction of special official speech acts. The representation of «crisis» and «stability» in these speech acts (defined in the article, in accordance with J. Searle's classification as «representative», «commissive” and “expressive») allows public opinion manipulating without specifying the meaning of the lexemes themselves, but with maintaining the desired image of power. Up to the author's mind, the continuing appeal of the official discourse to the lexemes of «crisis» and «stability», despite the accumulated contradictions and even frank anecdotes (in terms of completely different statements of the same speaker), allows, on the one hand, to explain the failures of public policy by external circumstances (described with «crisis» speech acts), and on the other hand, continue the course of depoliticizing Russian society, associated with the fact that the Russian people associate «stability» with «order», «quiet» and the absence of changes. Thus, «stability», presented as the most important achievement of the existing government, turns into appeal of non-interference to the reproduction of the existing political regime and preferring it to the democratic slogans of opposition figures.
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