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The paper analyses the history-writing that deals with Estonia’s regaining of independence through the framework of semiotic theory of hegemony. Besides articulating this theory as a framework for political analysis an account is provided for the application of the general categories of semiotic theory of hegemony to history-writing as a specific system of meaning. Hence our recourse to mediating concepts from theories of history and historical memory: emplotment, master narrative, narrative substance, schematic narrative template. In our analysis we concentrate on all the writings of the historians who have been active in Estonia that meet the following criteria: 1) they seek to provide a perspicuous presentation of the dynamics of the whole period; 2) they are wide accounts: a monograph, a longer article or a commented sample of documents concentrating on the subject, or a chapter on the subject in an important general sourcebook on Estonia’s history; 3) the presentation of the subject is not mainly in the form of personal memories, but is framed as expressing an objective, by-stander’s, historian’s position. One of our conclusions is that besides being a professional practice history-writing constitutes also a certain political practice. Through analyzing the texts represented in our sample we chart how through representing Estonia’s transition through teleological narrative a political antagonism is constructed between the „proponents” and „opponents” to Estonia’s independence, and how several important aspects of the process of transition are peripherized and excluded from the narrative representation of Estonia’s regaining of independence.
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The literature on the resistance and protest movements of Czechoslovakian dissidents and intellectuals during the communist period is abundant, but less attention has been devoted to close rhetorical analysis of the texts by the leaders of these movements. In conducting a case study on the rhetoric of the Czechoslovakian social movement Charter 77 during its early period of activity (1977–1978) as embodied in the early political essays of its leader Václav Havel and in the declaration of the movement, this article highlights the need to combine two theories in studying the rhetoric of social movement leaders: Laclauian discourse theory and social movement framing theory. The article claims that, in order better to explain the choice of rhetoric of social movements, the two theories can be used in a single frameworkas an empirical method for analysing social movements’ strategies. The study shows how combining Laclauian discourse analysis with framing theory expands social movement analysis; through the combination, it explains the inception, emergence and choice of strategy of the Charter 77 movement.
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This article focuses on construction of identity and the transformation of it in the period of radical changes in socio-cultural setting. Identity can be seen as a coherent discourse (or text) through which the homogeneity of a cultural system is established. This system implicitly demarcates itself from the extra-semiotic reality or a reality of certain other semiotic system. Our research topic is migration of people in Estonia’s recent past. Specifically we are interested in those non-Estonian speaking migrants that came to Estonia in 1960s. How different kind of practices of signification have been used and how they transform and co-exist also in Estonian nowadays public (declared) discourse are the questions which we try to discuss by using theoretical ideas of the Tartu-Moscow School of cultural semiotics, the concept of dialogue by Mikhail Bahktin and George Schöpflin’s concept of identity.
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Last December was really hard on all, and a still harder January awaits us. Everything aspiring to rule Serbia in the four years to come is running to and fro, making promises and endearing citizens. The whole Serbia resembles a fair of jugglery and acrobatics. Everybody exerts himself to sell his cheap merchandise at highest price possible. Well, that circus makes up unavoidable side-effect of the picturesque parliamentary democracy a la South. And we will (probably) leave all...
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