Journalism and the Political: Discursive Tensions in News Coverage of Russia

265 Pages·2011·12.6 MB·English

by  Felicitas Macgilchrist

Journalism and the Political
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society
and Culture (DAPSAC)
The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes
from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs
and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines
concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science,
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Irène Bellier Teun A. van Dijk Luisa Martín Rojo
Maison des Sciences de Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universidad Autonoma de
l’Homme, Paris, France Barcelona Madrid
Michael Billig Konrad Ehlich Jacob L. Mey
Loughborough University Free University, Berlin University of Southern
Denmark
Jan Blommaert Mikhail V. Ilyin
Tilburg University Polis, Moscow Christina Schäffner
Aston University
Paul Chilton Andreas H. Jucker
University of Lancaster University of Zurich Ron Scollon †
J.W. Downes J.R. Martin Louis de Saussure
University of East Anglia University of Sydney University of Neuchâtel
Volume 40
Journalism and the Political. Discursive tensions in news coverage of Russia
by Felicitas Macgilchrist
Journalism and the Political
Discursive tensions in news coverage of Russia
Felicitas Macgilchrist
Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research,
Braunschweig, Germany
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Macgilchrist, Felicitas.
  Journalism and the political : discursive tensions in news coverage of Russia / Felicitas
Macgilchrist.
p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 40)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.  Russia (Federation)--Press coverage--United States. 2.  Russia (Federation)--Press
coverage--Europe. 3.  Foreign news--Political aspects--United States. 4.  Foreign
news--Political aspects--Europe. 5.  Mass media and language--United States. 6. 
Mass media and language--Europe. 7.  Discourse analysis--Political analysis--
United States. 8.  Discourse analysis--Political analysis--Europe.  I. Title.
PN4888.R86M33 2011
070.4’49947086--dc22 2010044920
isbn 978 90 272 0631 2 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8730 4 (Eb)
© 2011 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1. Theoretical orientation 2
1.2 Research strategy 10
1.3 Russia 12
1.4 Foreign news 13
part i
chapter 2
Developing a story: NGOs, legislation and human rights in Moscow 19
2.1 Corpus: NGO legislation 20
2.2 Chains of equivalence 21
2.3 Lexical variability 27
2.4 Nodal points 30
2.5 Summary 33
chapter 3
Pragmatic deconstruction: Gas as Putin’s political weapon? 35
3.1 Corpus: Gazprom-Ukraine 35
3.2 Regularities and fissures 36
3.3 Alternative accounts 42
3.4 Threat discourse and economic discourse 47
3.5 Summary 49
chapter 4
The circulation of discourse: Litvinenko, polonium and the KGB 53
4.1 Corpus: Litvinenko 55
4.2 Linguistic/semiotic mechanisms 55
4.3 Alternatives 69
4.4 Summary 72
chapter 5
Metaphorical politics: The Russian-Chechen conflict 75
5.1 Corpus and stake inoculation 76
i Journalism and the Political
5.2 Nation-as-family 80
5.3 Budennovsk, southern Russia, 14 June 1995 85
5.4 Dagestan, 2 August 1999 89
5.5 Dubrovka theatre, Moscow, 23 October 2002 94
5.6 Beslan, 1 September 2004 97
5.7 Social imaginary 100
5.8 Summary 103
part ii
chapter 6
Responsibility management 107
6.1 Allocating responsibility for news stories
on Russo-Chechen crises 108
6.2 Allocating responsibility within news stories
on Russo-Chechen crises 113
6.3 Combining responsibility within and for news stories 121
6.4 Summary 126
chapter 7
Balance and binaries 129
7.1 Balance, fairness and conflict 130
7.2 Entextualizing balance 133
7.3 Three threats: Terrorism, militancy and savagery 138
7.4 Summary 154
chapter 8
Complexity reduction 157
8.1 History, ethnicity and ‘entrepreneurs of violence’ 158
8.2 Historical dis/embedding 160
8.3 Highlanderisation and familiarisation 169
8.4 Alternatives 177
8.5 Summary 178
part iii
chapter 9
‘Positive’ discourse analysis 183
9.1 Counter-discourse 185
9.2 Counter-discursive strategies 186
9.3 Visualising technologies 199
9.4 Summary 210
Table of contents ii
chapter 10
Concluding thoughts 211
10.1 Events 213
10.2 Journalists 215
10.3 Society and the political 216
10.4 Research process 219
References 223
Index 245

Acknowledgements
Particular thanks are due to the journalists and other media workers who took the
time to talk to me, sometimes at great length, in Moscow, Berlin, New York and by
email and telephone: Günter Bannas, Daniel Brössler, Paul Carvalho, Guy Chazan,
CJ Chivers, Andrew Jack, Tom Kent, Sonia Kishkovsky, Steven Lee Myers, Tom
Parfitt, Wolfgang Röhl, Michael Schon, Nick Paton Walsh, Markus Wehner and a
few others who would prefer to remain anonymous.
On the academic side, I would first like to thank Werner Schiffauer for sup-
port, encouragement and an inspiring ability to think theory together with politi-
cal practice. Thanks for the freedom to explore and write – for not pulling the
grass to make it grow faster. The stimulating intellectual environment provided
by the Anthropology Workshop at the European University Viadrina opened a
whole new field for me. Thanks also to Christa Ebert, for welcoming my post-
foundational approach to the postgraduate colloquium. Our discussions were
immensely productive for me.
I have also benefited enormously from feedback on earlier drafts and papers
from Paul Chilton, Barbara Christophe, Terry Cox, Tatjana Felberg, Gunther
Kress, Hartmut Lenk, Charlotte Lundgren, Marcus Otto, John Russell, Maria
Smyshliaeva, Tom Van Hout, Stephen White and participants at the Essex Sum-
mer School, although not all will agree with the positions taken in this book. I am
grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, who helped me to focus more explicitly
on parts of the argument presented in Chapters 1 and 10, and to Greg Myers for
giving just the right comments at just the right time. Thanks to Carol Duncan, Ali
Sultani and Sylwia Wewiora for help with acquiring materials, and to my students
for reminding me of the value of applied discourse analysis. Heartfelt thanks to
my other friends and colleagues for constructive discussions and well-needed dis-
tractions. Marco Frank has now spent almost as much time with the ideas in this
book as I have. Thanks for your insightful feedback on the entire study and for
constantly drawing my attention to new theoretical work; talking with you about
these ideas – and so much more – has been more valuable than you can imagine.
The research for this book was provided by a German Research Founda-
tion (DFG) stipend through the graduate programme ‘Representation-Rhetoric-
Knowledge’ at the Faculty of Cultural and Social Sciences (Kulturwissenschaften)
of the European University Viadrina. The theoretical exchanges in that pro-
gramme set this research in a quite unforeseen direction. I thank all involved.