Legacies of Totalitarian Language in the Discourse Culture of the Post-Totalitarian Era

The Case of Eastern Europe, Russia, and China

Ernest Andrews

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780739164679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

This book is unique in its kind. It is the first scholarly work to attempt a comprehensive and fairly detailed look into the lingering legacies of the communist totalitarian modes of thought and expression in the new discourse forms of the post-totalitarian era. The book gives also new and interesting insights into the ways the new, presumably democratically-minded political elites in post-totalitarian Eastern Europe, Russia, and China manipulate language to serve their own political and economic agendas. The book consists of ten discrete discussions, nine case-studies or chapters and an introduction.

Chapter 1 discusses patterns of continuity and change in the conceptual apparatus and linguistic habits of political science and sociology practiced in the Czech Republic before and after 1989. Chapter 2 analyzes lingering effects of communist propaganda language in the political discourse and behavior in post-communist Poland. Chapter 3 analyzes the legacy of Soviet semantics in post-Soviet Moldovan politics through the prism of such politically contested words as "democracy," "democratization," and "people." Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the way in which communist patterns of thought and expression manifest themselves in the new political discourse in Romania and Bulgaria, respectively. Chapter 6 examines phenomena of change and continuity in the socio-linguistic and socio-political scene of post-Soviet Latvia. Chapter 7 analyzes the extent to which the language of the post-communist Romanian media differs from the official language of the communist era. Chapter 8 examines the evolution of Russian official discourse since the late eighties with a view of showing "whether or not new phenomena in the evolution of post-Soviet discourse represent new development or just a mutation of the value-orientations of the old Soviet ideological apparatus." Chapter 9 gives a detailed and lucid account of the evolution of both official and non-official discourse in China since the end of the Mao era.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Absent Past: The Language of Czech Sociology Before and After 1989
• Chapter 2 The Linguistic Legacy of the Communist Propaganda in Post-Communist Thought Patterns: The Case of Poland
• Chapter 3 What Does Democracy Mean in Moldova?: Political Discourse Around Contested Words in the Disputed Elections of 2009
• Chapter 4 The Language of Romanian Post-Communist Politics Twenty Years After: Linguistic Memories of a Communist Past
• Chapter 5 Newspeak in the Language of Politics in the Post-Totalitarian Era: The Case of Bulgaria
• Chapter 6 Intertwining Legacies: Language and Socio-Cultural Change in Post-Soviet Latvia
• Chapter 7 The Language of the Media in Post-Communist Romania: Changes and Continuities
• Chapter 8 Official Ideological Discourse in Pre-Transition and Post-Communist Russia: What Has Really Changed since the Communist Period?
• Chapter 9 Language, State, and Society in Post-Mao China: Continuity and Change
• About the Contributors