Towards semiotic theory of hegemony

Andreas Ventsel - Towards semiotic theory of hegemony. Tartu University Press, 2009. 172 lk

Pärast Ventseli magistritöö lugemist ruttasin loomulikult ka tema doktoritööd laenutama. Kolmapäevastes loengutes uurisin selle doktoritöö struktuuri, tegin märkmeid ja unistasin oma töö kirjutamisest. Laenasin sissejuhatusest sõnapaari "teoreetiline raamistik" ja mõtisklesin pikalt selle üle, kas mul oleks võimalik oma teemaga toimida analoogselt. Mõtisklused mõtiskluseks, selle teose reaalse lugemiseni jõudsin nädal aega hiljem.
Nüüd läbilugenuna mõistan, et teoreetiline raamistik kui selline nõuab väga palju aega ja vaimutööd, mida mul võib ja võib mitte olla järgneva kolme aasta jooksul. Tööst endast sain nii palju targemaks, et näen nüüd põhjust miks Andreas meile semiootikat õpetades Bourdieu ja Foucaulti tekse söödab. Ka meie seminaritekstid tegelevad võimuga. Pisut kentsakas kokkusattumus on see, et samal teemal mõtiskledes (nii seminaris kui ka kursusekaaslastega) olen toonud näiteid George Orwelli 1984st ja ühes nendest paberitest mida see doktoritöö sisaldab (see paber, mis avaldati vene kommunikatsioonialases väljaandes) täpselt sama näidet newspeak nähtuse kohta, mida ma paar päeva tagasi olin sõnadesse seadnud.
Oma teoreetilise raamistiku ehitas ta läbi Ernesto Laclau (Essexi koolkond) ja Juri Lotmani (Tartu-Moskva koolkond) ideede kõrvutamise. Kuna momendil pole ma kummagagi väga tuttav, ei oska sel teemal rohkem kommenteerida. Pigem teen paar pisimärkust: sõna "muulane" on ta tõlkinud inglise keelde kui "otherian". Ja mitteverbaalne suhtlemine on tema sõnakasutuses "extra-verbal rhetoric".
Järgmiseks üritan läbi lugeda samasse valdkonda jääva teose "A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject". Kuna Ventseli töös on diskursuseanalüüs, võim ja "meie" juba käsitletud ja vähemasti pinnapealselt olen asjaga tuttav, siis peaks see järgmine teos teadmisi täiendama.

Hoiustaksin siia Ventseli koostatud sõna discourse tähendused:

1. "Speech" in the sense of Ferdninand de Saussure, i.e. every specific parole (1966).
2. A unit higher than phrases, an utterance in a global sentence. Understood as an object of study for the "grammar of the text", it marks the succession and regularity of different utternaces;
3. In speech act theory and pragmatics, discourse is defined as an effect of an utterance on the receiver, and the conditions of expressing this utterance. The best-known representative of this approach is Jürgen Habermas, who in his work Theory of Communicative Action (1981) considers mutual understanding and reaching a consensus as the main objectives of communicative action, which both in economy and politics takes place through rationalist-instrumtnal calculation. Thus Habermas does not attach rationality to subjects (as in the Kantian tradition) but uses it to characterise the structure of interpersonal linguistic communication.
4. A conversation, which is observed as a main speech situation.
5. Emile Benviste (1996) refers to discourse as a speech ascribed to the speaker, as opposed to the "story", that proceeds without an explicit presence of the speaker in speech.
6. At times, language and speech/discourse are considered as opposites; on the one hand, as a system of virtual meanings which are relatively undifferentiated and stable, and on the other hand, as a deviation from it, caused by the diversity ways of using a unit of language. Thus studying an element in language and in speech are distinguished (Seriot 1999:26).
7. Discourse is also used in specifying sense, as a function for assembling an indeterminate amount of utterances into a totality, by way of which the diversity of utterance is gathered into the unity of a social or ideological discourse. Thus for example we can talk about feminist discourse as a whole, not just within the frame of a specific work that alone forms but a part of one whole feminist discourse. This is one of the most common definitions of discourse in ordinary and scientific language.
8. Utterance and discourse are distinguished. The former refers to the succession of phrases that are semantically bounded wihtin a speech unit in communication. The latter is an utterance that is observed from the standpoint of discourse mechanism that determines the formes (Guespin 1971: 10). From this point of view, discourse is not the first or the empirical object in an analysis. Rather, a theoretical (constructed) object is considered that refers to the relations between language and ideology, the real object of analysis.