We present research conducted at ISS PAS as part of the POLONEZ BIS 2 programme of the National Science Centre (NCN):
Dr. Anton Dinerstein from Belarus is implementing a project entitled „Power and identity in Russian-language political discourse: The case of Belarus”. The supervisor of the project on the part of the Institute is dr hab. Anna Engelking, prof. ISS PAS.
Project description:
This project attempts to understand how key political concepts, such as “power,” “sovereignty,” “state,” and related cultural terms, such as “people” and “country,” that are used in Russian-language political discourse and everyday interactions about politics using the Russian language, impact the ways people in post-Soviet countries, such as Belarus, make sense of politics. Eventually, this research project attempts to show how Russian-language political discourse found in everyday interactions and public communication about politics contributes to the construction of meaning about politics and identity in modern-day Belarus.
The proposed research project investigates how the existing political language and the discourse that is formed based on this language become one of the ways of maintaining and challenging the social, cultural, and political realities in Belarus. This research also investigates how ideas about shared activities, relationships, and identities are communicated through everyday interactions about politics.
This project has several research goals:
- To explain how politics is discursively constructed in Belarusian political discourse and everyday interactions about politics.
- To explain how the understanding of politics may be shaped by the use of Russian-language political terms that are used to make political arguments both by officials and Belarusian citizens at large.
- To show how the current understanding of politics based on the political discourse and everyday interactions about politics is related to the local historical and cultural context.
- To propose more comprehensive ways to approach and understand politics in the Belarusian and post-Soviet societies for both the people who live in the country and for those who live outside Belarus.
- To contribute to the national and international dialogue related to Belarus and, possibly, to other post-Soviet spaces.
Dr. Anton Dinerstein — is a native of Belarus. He is currently a POLONEZ BIS MSCA Fellow and a Principal Investigator on a two-year research project entitled “Power and identity in Russian-language political discourse: The case of Belarus,” which is hosted at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The project is co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 945339. More broadly, Anton Dinerstein’s research is focused on political discourse, public creativity, social change, and cultural transformation in modern-day Belarus. His analysis focuses on identity, cultural rituals, and social mythology as reflected in everyday communication. He holds an MA degree in Political Sociology, MS in Journalism & Electronic Media, and a PhD in Communication.
POLONEZ BIS is co-financed by the European Commission and the National Science Centre under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND grant. More information on the competition and the results is available on NCN’s website: https://ncn.gov.pl/aktualnosci/2022-12-06-wyniki-opus23-preludium21-polonezbis2