IV. Media Discourses and the Protests
IV.1 Analyzing the Communist Discourse and its Shifts
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
IV.1 Analyzing the Communist Discourse and its Shifts
Discourse is a term difficult to define, since it has been used in various and often contradictory ways. For linguists it means "spoken or written language use", sometimes extended to producing meanings by other activities, such as visual images or non-verbal communication.271 However, following the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s works on archaeology of knowledge and order of things,272 discourse can also mean a coherent way of using the language in order to produce a text (or speech or generally discourse in linguistic sense) which has characteristic features, for example social science discourse, catholic discourse or Vaclav Havel’s "ptydepe" (a Communist, meaning-free discourse).
The basic works that allow connecting analysis of discourse with social and political analysis are Fairclough’s Language and Power (1989), Discourse and Social Change (1992), Media Discourse (1995) and Analysing Discourse (2003)273 where he develops his approach to what is called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Other works relevant for analyzing media’s political discourse are John E. Richardson’s Analysing Newspapers (2007) or Paul Chilton’s Analysing Political Discourse (2004).
Generally speaking, Fairclough’s perspective aims at exploring hidden political bias in the analyzed texts by focusing on the key features of their language. By comparing various features of the analyzed discourse with their possible alternatives, he is able to show how the political hegemony – or contra-hegemony – works through these texts. Richardson uses modified Fairclough’s framework to analyze certain specifics of media discourse, and the
271 N. Fairclough, Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold, 1995, p. 54.
272 M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970. M. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge. Lodon: Routledge, 1972. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House, 1975.
273 N. Fairclough,. Language and Power. London: Longman, 1989. N. Fairclough,. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. N. Fairclough, Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold, 1995. N.
Fairclough, Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 2003.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
book by Chilton provides tool for analyzing the political dimensions of the media texts.
This analysis will follow Fairclough, Richardson and Chilton, as well as Fidelius, Glowinski and Kluver, and focus on the features of the political discourse most relevant in the situation of protests against the authoritarian regime: (1) What kind of legitimacy is attached to actors, to their actions, to the status quo and to possible prospect of change? (2) For whom the voice of the discourse ("we") speaks? (3) How is the power reflected by the discourse? (4) What kind of contradictions are present? (5) How is the discourse related to its context (e.g. the real material world outside the text)?
The notion of legitimacy shows approval or disapproval of the voice of the discourse for particular people or groups (actors). The classic example here is the choice of words for
"freedom fighters" or "terrorists" for the same group of people, depending on the point of view of the "voice" that assigns these labels. The same thing can be also analyzed for the actions the actors are doing and also for the "background" of the "story," as the voice of the text evaluate prospects of the original status quo, its possible "disturbance", and also of the prospect of change, e.g. abandoning the old status quo in favor of a new one by some actors that the discourse includes.
With political discourse it is almost a rule that it attaches legitimacy to some actors, events or status quo, and also that it directly speaks for some of the actors or the status quo - or its change. The way it handles all these things also illuminates the way how the power is reflected in the discourse: is the voice itself powerful - or is it speaking against, or about the power?
Usually discourse analysis can reveal what the voice sees as important, and what it wants to be silent about. Often, too, this results into contradictions: while trying to defend a problematic position by rhetorical means, this trying itself shows the problem the voice is trying to hide. And finally, why does it do it? This is one of the reasons the critical discourse analysis needs to explore also the context.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
There are already several accounts attempting a direct description of key elements of the official Communist discourse, usually focusing on its rigidity and its specific grasp of reality.
In his analysis of what he calls "discourse of the Communist Power," Petr Fidelius notes that after some profound doubts about whether the discourse of the official Czech media during Czechoslovakia’s Normalization period actually refers to something real, he "soon realized that there is a kind of order in the Communist discourse, that it is indeed a discourse about certain world, even if it would be an ‘imaginary’ world, e.g. a specifically ideological reflection of the world." As he adds, his "strongest research experience has been a realization that in its own discourse, the Communist regime provides a completely truthful reflection of its nature."274
According to Fidelius, one of the key features of the Communist discourse is that it is not clear who speaks to whom, e.g. whose voice speaks trough the discourse and who is its ideal or imagined audience. Thus the voice of the "we" can either include both the regime and the readers, or only the Communist Party, or only the leadership of the Communist Party etc.275 Moreover, the Czechoslovak newspapers that Fidelius analyzed seemed not to have a voice of their own, acting as a mere mouthpieces of the regime.
Another key feature of the Communist discourse is who "the people" are. A central term of the Communist discourse, it can be either inclusive (e.g. "all citizens") or exclusive (often:
"working people"). The problem of the term, as Fidelius emphasizes,276 is what is excluded from the term’s scope of meaning. On one hand, it is the Communist party-state which defines who belongs to "the people" and "goes against the people", using the scientific perspective of Marxism-Leninism in order to legitimize the choices it makes. For example, at certain times it is only the Communist Party itself that constitutes "the people" (in cases
274 Fidelius 1998, 11 (emphasis in original)
275 Fidelius 1998, 12
276 ibid., 19
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
when the "core of the people" acts against its "objective interests" and it is only the Party with its Marxist-Leninist know-how which can act on behalf of these confused people and thus save the situation). However, this actually means that the Party and "the people" are two separate entities, with the Party being the political leader of "the people."277
On the other hand, as has been already mentioned, there are "small groups" or
"individuals" who are outside of the scope of "the people". Basically, since the Party leads
"the people" to their "full form of existence", those who deny this leading role of the Party implicitly exclude themselves from "the people."278 Thus the Communist discourse sometimes – tellingly – uses "people" and "Party" interchangeably (with the "people" serving de facto as a label for the "Party"), sometimes the "Party" acts in the interest of the "people"
because it knows better (and therefore the "people" and the "Party" are separate), and sometimes the "people" are only those who follow the leadership of the "Party" while those who oppose this leadership "exclude themselves" from "the people".
Similar logic works also regarding some other key terms. Thus "people’s democracy"
differs from the "old" democracy because the "objective interests" of the people are objectively known thanks to Marxism-Leninism and therefore there is no need for any plurality: only one voice correctly formulating these interests is necessary, and it is the voice of the Communist Party with its supreme understanding of the Marxism-Leninism.279 In this framework, the "objective interests" of the individual cannot go contrary to the interests of the whole society – such and individual would be "asocial", "declassed individual", and any problems caused by this disharmony would be his or her fault. Conversely, any problems on the state level cannot be systemic because the Party and the people cannot be wrong thanks to
277 ibid., 40
278 ibid., 43
279 ibid., 47
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
the guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism, but they are caused by individual failures.280 In other words: the Party cannot be wrong, it knows the best for everyone, and even if it acknowledges that it has been wrong in the past, this has been caused by a change of historical context and in the present, the Party is always right by definition.281
According to Fidelius, this "Party cannot be wrong" is a basic axiom of the Communist discourse and there is no need to prove it – everything bad can be explained by "historical conditions" or individual pathology.282 The peculiar logic of the discourse is not used for a real communication of ideas, but rather to "immunize the minds" of the people against their own independent ideas and to "paralyze their ability to think."283 And since the thinking depends on speech and its confrontation with the real world, creating a Communist
"newspeak" that would be resistant to reality should – according to the author - paralyze the minds of the people exactly in this way. Moreover, the logic of the Communist discourse is very reductive and "you can reduce the whole without sacrificing the quality of the thing", e.g. the meaning of "the people" can be reduced to the "working people", then further to the
"working class", then to "Party", then to the "healthy core of the Party" which actually means Party leadership or – especially in times before the collective Party leaderships – the main Party leader himself.284 After all these reductions, the only meaning left in the Communist discourse is a claim that socialism is a regime based on Party leadership which gives the discourse a certain metaphysical nature – the Party leadership being a "Tao" of everything.285
Incidentally, one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen movement, Wang Dan, in his
280 ibid., 52-59
281 ibid., 77-82 and again 169-170
282 ibid., 189
283 ibid., 181
284 ibid., 167
285 ibid., 197
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
text On Freedom of Speech for the Opposition286 provides similar account on the Chinese official discourse: "That suppression [of freedom of speech] is based upon the formula that Truth equals the World View of the Proletariat, which is equated with Marxism, which is equated with the World View of the CCP, which is equated with the proclamation of Party Organs, which is equated with the views of the Leadership. There is no need even to comment upon such poor logic."
Observations made by Fidelius are echoed in a similar analysis of the Polish discourse by Michal Glowinski Nowomowa po polsku (1991), where the author identified four key characteristics of the Communist "nowomowa" (newspeak): first, it contains dichotomies between what is "ours", "acceptable", "correct" and what is not; second, it has a pragmatic aspect (seeking to influence people's minds) and its ritual aspect (spelling out "appropriate"
words and phrases; third, it contains elements of magic as it aims not to describe, but rather to create an "actually existing" world of actually existing socialism by defining the reality in an ideologically correct way; fourth, it is thoroughly arbitrary regarding meanings of concepts, ideas, and elements of language, and this arbitrariness depends on regime's current needs. Glowinski also adds that the Communist discourse is based on unspoken assumption that the Communist government is a "good government".