Ukrainian perspectives on the Self,the EU and Russia: an intersemiotic analysis of Ukrainian newspapers

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to our understanding of EU-Ukraine relations by examining intersemiotic communication – how words and images, or verbal and photographic semiotic layers and their interaction, combine in the representation of international affairs. The analysis focuses on Ukraine’s perspectives of Self, the EU and Russia as presented in Ukrainian media discourse, namely, in leading Ukrainian social and political newspapers (January-June, 2016). The article presents the results of applying the cognitive theory of perspectives to research the intersemiotic and mental image of Self and Other in four aspects: a vantage point, direction of scanning, perspectival distance, and perspectival mode. Based on that, I explain the main strategic narrative of the Ukrainian press about the EU, how it is sustained, and how the image of the EU becomes pronounced.     

Counter-hegemony in today's Belarus: dissident symbols and the mythological figure of Miron Vitebskii

Tackling the role of state symbols in negotiating national identity and political development, this research focuses on Belarus where the alternative white–red–white flag became instrumental in protests against the dominant political discourse. Since 1995, oppositional mass media have been reporting about cases of this tricolor being erected in hard-to-reach and/or politically sensitive places. These actions were mainly attributed to some “Miron,” whose identity remained concealed and served as a simulacrum of a national superhero in non-conformist discourse. The image of Miron immediately acquired multiple functions: condemning the Soviet colonial past, struggling for the European future, and creating a nation-state rather than the Russian-speaking civil-state of Belarus. Yet, first and foremost, Miron became a means for contesting the authority of the president who has been in power since 1994. Concentrating on the methods employed for the construction of the counter-hegemonic fakelore project of Miron and its aims, this article explores the vernacular response to its creation.     

俄白联盟:进程、问题与前景——白俄罗斯的视角

本文分析了俄白联盟建设的动因与过程,介绍了西方及俄罗斯和白俄罗斯两国对俄白联盟及其前景的评估,重点分析了俄白联盟进程中的问题与难点.本文认为俄白联盟的建立首先是出于地缘战略利益的考量,两国一体化任重道远.但无论出现何种政治变化,俄白都将致力于推动两国合作.