THE STEREOTYPES OF INCONVENIENCED AND NON-CIVILIZED RUSSIA IN MASS MEDIA TEXTS

• Authors: Maidanova L. M.
• Languages of publication: RU

Abstracts

EN

The authoress considers two Russian social consciousness stereotypes interpreted in the press of 1991-2004 by applying the ideas of mental linguistics. These are the stereotypes of inconvenienced and non-civilized Russia. During the initial period of Russian new press development they were functioning within the contexts attributing them either to the USSR or to Russia. The time and modality of the statements are not fixed. What they imply may be generally stated as follows: 'the inconvenienced and non-civilized USSR should be replaced by well-balanced and civilized Russia'. However, these stereotypes do not disappear with the development of the press. By contrast, they turn into the transparent motives of the discourse which has something in common with the evaluation of Russia in XVII-XIX centuries. The stereotype of being inconvenienced always appears in the texts as a crash or crisis of different social spheres. The meaning of it is expressed in a number of words used both in the terminological and non-terminological way, in the literal sense of a word and metaphorically. The meaning of the word 'crash' is realized in several standard contexts. The context of the 'crash of hopes' represents 'crash' as an unexpected consequence of the situation which was to be successful. The context of 'those who are to be blamed for the crash' manifests itself in two ways depending on who is to blame. An inner or outer 'enemy' might be named. This context gives the mass consciousness formulations describing the situation in the country in a precise way: 'the struggle of bureaucracy against people', 'the West is robbing Russia'. This characteristic quality of the West influences the evaluation of the 'non-civilized' notion. A negative evaluations of the civilized West and positive evaluations of non-civilized Russia are appearing here The West in associated with the power of money and the armed thrusting of democratic values. Non-civilized Russia is said to be the keeper of age-old national traditions. The revival and constant application of mass consciousness stereotypes of 'inconvenienced and non-civilized Russia' contribute to shaping the general discourse modality of instability which reflects the state of the society solving the problems of its future.

Keywords

EN

RUSSIAN MASS MEDIA; STEREOTYPES

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Instytut Polonistyki i Kulturoznawstwa Uniwersytetu Opolskiego
• Journal: Stylistyka
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 14
• Pages: 521-532
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Maidanova L. M.

• L.M. Maidanova, Ural State University, Journalism department, 51 Lenin Ave., Ekaterinburg 620083, Russian Federation

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

05PLAAAA00461171