Abstract
The article presents an analysis of the context of swastika in the contemporary extremist discourse. The result of this research will be of practical value and can be used by the experts for cases of initiation of race, racial or religious strife.
The key moment for the analysis and “identifi cation” of the symbols and its reference to the Nazi ones (extremist or nationalistic in other terms) consists of two factors: intention and the context, which makes it possible to precisely defi ne the images implied by the symbol.
For the correct assessment of the symbols it is necessary to use complex analysis of the context, which allows to create “semantic fi eld”. The term “context” is used in the broad sense, as a complex of different conditions/factors of functioning (creation and further interpretation) of a symbol.
In the course of the research we singled out the main factors of the context of swastika in the contemporary nationalistic discourse, the factors that allow to identify it as a Nazi symbol or a symbol similar in every respect. We divided the factors into fi ve groups: verbal, visual, audio, situational and cultural. Full analysis of these factors is possible only if it is a multidisciplinary research held by the group of specialists including linguists, culture experts and historians. In the frameworks of linguistic research it is possible to analyze the fi rst three factors (visual, verbal and audio), in case they are a single utterance in the form of a creolized text, i.e. a text that consists of the units of different sign systems.
The verbal context of swastika in the analyzed discourse is presented by three types of captions: nomination, comment and slogan.
Slogan is the most frequent caption combined with swastika, but not all slogans can be referred to nationalistic ones. We singled out several groups of slogans frequent in the contemporary youth and nationalistic discourse: ideological slogans, slogans-threats, slogansappeals and cultural slogans.
This classification allows to present the whole vector of combinability, but it is important to underline that in the complex research we shouldn’t be restricted by only one of the factors mentioned above, even in the analysis of the verbal context it is necessary to regard the visual level as well.
Keywords
Nazi symbols; swastika; extremist discourse; context; contextual factors; expertise
Bagdasarov, R. 2001: Svastika: svyashchennyy simvol: etnoreligiovedcheskie ocherki. Moscow.
Barbashov, V.P. 2014: Intentsional’noe znachenie «svastiki» kak otrazhenie kollektivnoy intentsional’nosti v kreolizovannykh tekstakh. Filologiya i chelovek 4, 131–137.
Federal’nyy zakon «Ob uvekovechenii Pobedy sovetskogo naroda v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyne 1941–1945 godov» ot 19 maya 1995 g. № 80-FZ.
Federal’nyy zakon «O protivodeystvii ekstremistskoy deyatel’nosti» ot 25 iyulya 2002 g. № 114- FZ.
Özman, A., Yakin, A.Y. 2012: The symbolic construction of communism in Turkish anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War. Journal of Language and Politics. Vol. 11 (4), 583–605.
Pavlov, A.N. 2012: Svastika – simvol pod zapretom. Zakonnost‘ i pravoporyadok v sovremennom obshchestve 10, 137–142.
Ross, C. 2006: Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany. German History 24 (2), 184–211.
Rydchenko, K.D. 2009: Nekotorye osobennosti obespecheniya zapreta propagandy i publichnogo demonstrirovaniya natsistskoy atributiki i simvoliki. Vestnik Voronezhskogo instituta MVD Rossii 2, 60–65.
Voroshilova, M.B., Karapetyan, A.A. 2014: Natsionalisticheskaya atributika i simvolika v sovremennom molodezhnom ekstremistskom diskurse: iz praktiki opredeleniya. In: Politicheskaya kommunikatsiya: perspektivy razvitiya nauchnogo napravleniya: materialy Mezhdunar. nauch. konf. Ekaterinburg, 51–53.
Voroshilova, M.B., Karapetyan, A.A. 2015: Svastika na stenakh shkol: printsipy lingvisticheskogo analiza simvoliki. In: Yazyk i pravo: aktual’nye problemy vzaimodeystviya: materialy V-oy Mezhdunar. nauch.-prakt. konf. Rostov n/D., 7–13.
Yegorova, N.A. 2015: The rehabilitation of nazism: Criminal law analysis. Criminology Journal of Baikal National University of Economics and Law 9 (3), 494–503.
Zelenina, O.V., Suslonov, P.E. 2009: Metodika vyyavleniya priznakov ekstremizma. Protsessual’nye issledovaniya (ekspertizy) audio-, video- i pechatnykh materialov: nauchno- prakticheskoe posobie. Ekaterinburg.
Zusman, E. 2009: Zapret na izobrazhenie svastiki v Rossii i zarubezhnykh stranakh: zakonodatel’stvo i praktika sudov, http://www.ifapcom.ru/fi les/Monitoring/2009/zusman_ no_swastika.pdf