Abstract
This study examines discursive representations of judicial power in Russian print media. The data are drawn from governmental and oppositional newspapers and cover a six-month period during 2013. Using an approach that is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and a pragma-dialectical perspective on argumentation, the authors distinguish strategies and specific linguistic means as well as argumentation fallacies that journalists employ in the articles to construct the representation which is consistent with a newspaper’s ideology.
Introduction
In modern Russia, the situation with regard to attitudes towards judicial power can be characterised as paradoxical. On the one hand, surveys reveal predominantly negative public opinion about judicial power. According to a recent survey dated 2012, 40% of respondents expressed distrust of judicial power while only 24% demonstrated confidence. 1 On the other hand, judicial statistics provided by the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Arbitration 2 prove an increase in the number of cases in courts of different levels as more and more Russian citizens and organisations seek protection of their rights and interests through litigation in court, even against the state. The ambiguous situation that combines public distrust of the judiciary and an avalanche of legal claims needs to be explored in terms of the media’s potential impact on public perceptions of judicial power in Russia. In this article, we aim to explore representations of judicial power in the Russian press. The topic of the portrayal of judicial power in the Russian press is novel and has not been previously discussed in scholarly literature. 3
This article has five sections. ‘Judicial power and the media in modern Russia: A history of relations’ offers an insight into the history of relations between judicial power and the media in Russia in the last few decades. ‘Literature review and basic assumptions’ contains a literature review and the assumptions that underlie the study. The third section describes the data and methodology. We then discuss the results of our research, before offering conclusions in the final section.
Judicial power and the media in modern Russia: A history of relations
The modern story of the complicated relations between judicial power and the media in Russia from the early 1990s to the present day is presented in a concise form by Mishina (2011) in a feature article on the website of the non-profit organisation, Institute of Modern Russia. The author analyses consistently a number of important stages in these relations.
In the early 1990s, Russia received two new independent institutions: the press, which enjoyed the taste of freedom, and the judicial system, which managed to explicitly manifest its independence when, in September 1993, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation vetoed President Yeltsin’s Law No. 1400 on constitutional reforms in Russia after having recognised the law as non-compliant with constitutional norms. This action was invaluable since it confirmed the Constitutional Court’s independent status. The Constitutional Court also proved to be a leader in establishing relations with the media. In this respect, a step forward was the foundation in May 1997 of the Law Reporters’ Guild, the purpose of which was fair coverage of court events. However, soon after, the judicial system reverted to servility to the state, showing a lack of response to media needs (Mishina, 2011).
At present, there are a few principal aspects in the ‘media–courts’ relation which predetermine both the media agenda and public perception of judicial power. In their discussion of relations with courts, media representatives often complain about the lack of access to information as well as the insufficient number of qualified public relations (PR) secretaries in courts (Mishina, 2011). Journalists also express dissatisfaction about the judiciary’s use of the Code of Judicial Conduct 4 as a shield to maintain their isolation from the society and the media. That these claims are not groundless can be inferred from admissions made by the members of the judiciary: ‘Cases are not rare when members of the judiciary by all means try to build unwarranted barriers to the media’s access to information about court activities, thus laying the basis for an uncongenial relation’ (Senyakin and Balashov, 2008: 40; translation from Russian into English hereinafter has been done by the authors).
The judiciary, in their turn, express criticism of the media and indicate that journalists fail to provide a well-grounded coverage of court activities, lack professional culture, distort facts and discredit the judiciary (Senyakin and Balashov, 2008: 40). This situation causes concern among the judiciary, who refer to the federal law ‘On the Order of Coverage of the State Authorities’ Activities’, 5 which demands that journalists be objective and portray multiperspective representations in the media.
Apart from the aforementioned documents, other normative Acts have been passed to regulate the ‘media–judiciary’ interrelation. The federal laws ‘The Russian Federation Law on the Mass Media’ 6 and ‘On the Access to Information about Court Activities in the Russian Federation’ 7 determine both parties’ rights and responsibilities, as well as listing ways of communicating information on court activities.
Striving to gain a positive image of a transparent and fair institution, judicial power also passed a few internal Acts. The ‘Act on the Judicial System Information Policy’ 8 explicitly states the necessity to inform the population of the role of the judicial system in society. Another Act, titled ‘On the State of Justice in the Russian Federation and Prospects for its Development’, 9 sets the task to increase the level of authority of judicial power, which is admitted to be rather low partly due to inaccurate criticism in the media.
While the executive branch and legislators have considerable experience in influencing the media agenda, judicial power is new to this. However, the purpose of the judges is not to win the battle for media attention, which they apparently do not lack, but to gain control over media representations of the Russian judiciary.
To sum up, in recent decades, the media and judicial power in Russia have been working together on modelling a new type of relationship that would allow the former to retain substantial independence and the latter to construct a positive self-portrait. This process has had a few important landmarks, but has not always been smooth and successful. In the analysis that follows, we will distinguish dominant strategies of judiciary representations in the Russian media and discuss the resulting image.
Literature review and basic assumptions
There is little English language research done on the Russian media. Foreign discourse analysts’ interest in Russian sociopolitical life is often restricted by their lack of expertise in the Russian language, while Russian scholars tend to communicate their research predominantly in their mother tongue. Because Russian scholarship is generally unavailable to a wider international community, it is expedient to present a summary of the principal tendencies in print media studies in Russia.
The analysis of Russian scholarship makes it possible to identify a few dominant streams in media studies. Representatives of the first stream shed light on the typical and newly emerging characteristics of media texts, which in recent years have become more polemical, reflective, categorical, subjective, emotional and aggressive (Klushina, 2013; Kormilitsyna, 2008). The characteristics enumerated above are explained in terms of modern sociopolitical processes, which favour clashes of opinions, articulation of sentiments, demonstration of confidence and readiness to protect one’s views from outside attacks.
Very closely linked to the aforementioned studies is the area of research into media genres and styles. The genres of print media, such as interview, advertising, news and investigative journalism, are explored in terms of their topics, composition, syntactic features, tropes, specific lexicon (e.g. jargon, obscene vocabulary, neologisms) and so on (Matyashevskaya, 2013; Nozhkina, 2003; Sveshnikova and Yagubova, 2006). This group of studies almost completely ignores the social constituent of media practices and focuses instead on their stylistic component, thus situating the trend within the purely linguistic domain of research rather than social studies.
A critical analysis of media, as inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) traditions, is virtually non-existent in Russian scholarship. While studies of media strategies and tactics are rather popular (Kopylova, 2013; Ruzhentseva, 2012), they do not aim to explain how media practices can structure social life. Even those authors who purport to explore media strategies as socially constructive phenomena tend to confuse discursive and stylistic strategies (Zotova, 2013), concentrate on the writer’s personality (Ivanova and Spodarets, 2010) or offer truistic lists of media functions (Zhdanova, 2013).
The use of language for social research does transpire in some individual studies. Discussions of a newspaper-mediated dialogue between the public and the authorities (Kormilitsyna, 2004), discursive incitement of national enmity (Polyakova, 2014), media manipulations (Kulko, 2009), discursive construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ categories (Sowińska and Dubrovskaya, 2012a) and media effects (Kononova, 2008) can all be viewed as examples of critical analysis in the realm of Russian media studies.
In our analysis of the media representations of judicial power, we draw on a few basic assumptions that are part of scholarly literature, including CDA, which establishes dialectical relations between language and society. As Fairclough (2004) points out, ‘Language is an irreducible part of social life, dialectically interconnected with other elements of social life, so that social analysis and research always has to take account of language’ (p. 2).
In this article, media texts are viewed as authoritative voices (Busch, 2006) and – along with personal experience – as one of the most powerful sources of knowledge about the surrounding world. It is important that the media do not only represent but also construct the world (Thornborrow, 2006) and help to organise the ways we understand our own and other societies and cultures (McKay, 2006: 597).
The picture of reality constructed by the media is not, however, neutral and objective. Multiple and various, often contrasting, images of reality make the media ‘sites of discourse struggles’ (Busch, 2006: 612). Representational differences and selection of news occur due to organisational policies, political preferences and technical constraints, and result in the creation of a multilayered media landscape (McKay, 2006: 598). Bias, slant, stance and subjectivity are the concepts widely used to characterise media functioning (Bednarek and Caple, 2012; Entman, 2007; Molek-Kozakowska, 2012; Perrin, 2012; Van Dalen, 2012; Van Dijk, 1998; Vertommen et al., 2012).
Other points, which are of particular importance for the present research, include claims of an inherently negative media orientation, with a huge potential for creating negative effects in society alongside greater audience responsiveness to negative news over positive news (Leach, 2006; Soroka, 2006).
Media dependency theory is also relevant to the study. Garz (2013), who draws on it in his research into public employment expectations, writes ‘According to this theory, information transmitted by news media affects individual knowledge more extensively when less information is available from alternative sources (e.g., personal experience, interpersonal communication)’ (p. 157). Garz (2013) also mentions two other important characteristics of the media: the accumulative effects and the quantitative dominance of negative over positive coverage, which together ‘might influence the formation of people’s expectations towards pessimism’ (p. 157).
These remarks directly pertain to judiciary imaging in the Russian media for three reasons. First, it is apparent that the sphere of law and justice is one in which personal experience of many individuals is very limited and where the perception of this social institution relies mainly on media representations. A similar observation has been expressed in a discussion of the public perception of the judiciary in post-communist Slovenia: ‘To a greater extent, the social perception and public opinion of the work of the courts depends on media reports, the appearances of politicians and the public appearances of representatives of the judiciary’ (Iglicar, 2011: 1).
Second, judicial power is an issue that is quite regularly discussed in the press; therefore, it is expedient to speak of accumulative affects in the public sphere that this recurrent discussion may bring about.
Finally, people’s negative perception of judicial power in Russia may be predetermined by the dominance of negativity in the press. All of these allow us to define a research agenda and concentrate on answering the following groups of questions:
How regular are publications on judicial power in the Russian press? Are they part of a routine media agenda?
What negative or positive representational strategies are used to construct the image of the judicial power in the press? What is the resulting image?
Are there any differences in discursive representations of the judiciary in governmental and oppositional presses? What are they and what are their implications?
Data and methodology
In this study, we focus on print media only. The approach adopted in this article favours the idea that research of this kind should be data-driven. To avoid the researchers’ mistake of ‘skewed sampling, that is, cherry-picking texts that support their personal views and ignoring those that do not’ (Mautner, 2008: 37), the data were collected from two ideologically different sources: a governmental daily, Rossijskaja Gazeta (RG), and an oppositional newspaper, Novaja Gazeta (NG), published three times a week. Target readership of the newspapers is quite large: the circulation of RG is 185,445 (2010) in 44 cities of the Russian Federation, while the circulation of NG is 284,500 (2012). It should also be taken into account that the increasing trend of young and middle-aged people towards acquiring news in a digital format is not reflected in the circulation figures. Both RG and NG are considered to be quality journalism papers but – on closer inspection – the latter shows some signs of tabloidisation. Compared to RG, NG tends to dwell on dramatic news and scandalous issues. Moreover, the length of articles varies: NG’s articles are twice or even three times as long as articles in RG.
The data include 442 articles, which were manually retrieved from each paper’s electronic archives. Most articles dealt with issues relating to judicial power, courts or judges. Some texts did not, but were included in the data set as long as there was a mention of judicial power in the text. The articles in the electronic archives were identical to the articles in the print versions. The data cover a randomly chosen six-month period from January through June 2013. Table 1 presents the number and distribution of articles within the papers and the period of six months taken for analysis.
Distribution of articles within periods and newspapers.
The table shows that judicial power receives significant coverage in both papers though the number of articles in RG is almost twice as large as in NG. This inequality is proportionate to the number of issues of the papers: RG is published six times per week, while NG appears three times. An increase in the number of articles in RG in January and February can partly be explained by the ‘New Year promises’ effect. Some articles are interviews with officials, who sum up judicial work of the previous year and outline new tendencies for 2013. The highest frequency in both newspapers occurred in February due to the extensive coverage of the notorious trial of Oboronservis, a commercial organisation accused of illegal financial schemes when providing material resources for the Russian Army.
The count of articles reveals that the numbers are quite steady and that publications discussing the judiciary can be viewed as part of a routine media agenda. This consistency and the total number of articles lead us to a conclusion regarding possible media influence on the dominant public attitude towards judges and courts in Russia.
The study relies on qualitative methods of analysis. Along with the analysis of strategies performed in the vein of CDA, we draw on the pragma-dialectical perspective on argumentation (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992) when considering specific manipulative moves and argumentation fallacies within the distinguished strategies.
In this study, we draw on the definition of a strategy offered in Reisigl and Wodak (2001), where it is interpreted as ‘a more or less accurate and a more or less intentional plan of practices (including discursive practices) adopted to achieve a particular social, political, psychological or linguistic aim’ (p. 44). When exploring the data, we practised a bottom-up approach and eventually identified six major strategies that emerge from the analysed texts. Some of the strategies were discussed previously in scholarly literature, in which cases we provide appropriate references.
The following strategies are noted as principal for representations of judicial power:
An evaluation strategy, which involves assigning ‘evaluative attributions of negative and positive traits’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 45) to social actors. Evaluation strategy is realised mainly through nomination, that is, by employing lexical units with positive or negative semantics, or through particular grammatical categories (e.g. using the present perfect tense to emphasise results of an actor’s activities).
Emotionalisation, ‘which is accomplished lexically through explicit reference to emotions’ (Sowińska and Dubrovskaya, 2012b: 273) and employs this reference as a means of proof and argumentation. In the analysis, it will be demonstrated that emotionalisation is exploited fallaciously by the media.
Generalisation, which presupposes presenting a particular single event as happening on a regular basis or picturing an immediate quality as a permanent one. The linguistic markers of generalisation include lexical units (verbs, adverbs) that indicate the repetitiveness of particular actions. However, they are not necessary as the semantic sentence structure as a whole may realise this strategy.
Activation, which ‘occurs when social actors are represented as the active, dynamic forces in an activity’ (Van Leeuwen, 2003: 43), that is, presenting a social actor as a conscious and wilful doer of some activity, for which this actor claims responsibility.
Passivation, which occurs when social actors ‘are represented as “undergoing” the activity, or as being “at the receiving end of it”’ (Van Leeuwen, 2003: 43–44). This implies that social actors are objects – or even victims – of someone else’s activities and bear no responsibility for them. This strategy should be considered together with activation as they logically complement each other.
Foretelling, which involves giving forecasts for oneself or/and for other social actors and describing possible variations of future events.
The strategies listed, as will be illustrated, involve certain pragmatic duplicity since they exist in two variants, and, depending on his or her pragmatic purpose, a writer opts for this or that variant of the strategy. The difference between two variants of the same strategy consists in their evaluative orientation: positive or negative. Strategies with positive orientation are aimed at constructing a positive image of a social actor, while strategies with a negative orientation attribute negative qualities to an individual. The strategies are interrelated; they often overlap and complement each other in many fragments of media discourse.
In order to shed light on the paradoxical attitude towards judicial power in Russia, it is expedient to examine how the aforementioned strategies are exploited by journalists to construct either a favourable or unfavourable media image of the Russian judiciary. For the examples quoted from the newspapers, their Russian original versions are given first, followed by the English translations.
Results
In-depth textual analysis of the articles from RG and NG allows for distinguishing a number of dominant strategies employed by the authors to create the image of judicial power in Russia.
Evaluation strategy
Evaluation strategy is evident in both newspapers. Positive evaluation emerges in the governmental RG, whereas negative evaluation can be found in both RG and NG.
Lexical units with positive semantics, for example, правильно, опытных, полезными (correctly, experienced, helpful), draw a reader’s attention to the role of judicial power in society and highlight its significance and constructive function:
(1) В преддверии дачного сезона разъяснения самых опытных судей страны могут стать очень полезными. (RG, 12 March 2013) [On the threshold of the summer season, explanation of the country’s most experienced judges can be very helpful.]
Typically, the governmental paper will quote judiciary representatives, who point to progress in the judicial system. The following statement specifies some improvements (обеспечитьгласность, доступность информации – provide publicity, accessibility of information) and indicates its positive qualities (открытой – transparent):
(2) Мы должны сделать судебную систему максимально открытой. […] Арбитражные суды многое сделали, чтобы обеспечить гласность судебных процессов и доступность информации. (RG, 14 January 2013) [We must make the judicial system as transparent as possible […] Commercial dispute courts have done a lot to provide publicity of litigation and to contribute to the accessibility of information.]
As is seen in Example (2), positive evaluation is also realised grammatically – through the use of the past tense in Russian, which is rendered by the present perfect in English (сделали – have done). It helps to foreground the significant achievements of the judiciary.
When accomplishing the strategy of positive evaluation, the oppositional NG places the emphasis on social changes that are introduced due to the judiciary and considered to be positive, but does not concentrate on the system as a whole:
(3) Прокуратура добилась снятия запрета приходить в кино с едой. […] Суд требования прокуратуры удовлетворил в полном объеме. (NG, 16 April 2013) [The prosecution has withdrawn the ban on bringing your own food to the cinema. […] The court has fully upheld the claim of the prosecution.]
For the oppositional press, however, negative evaluation is in more demand. The journalists employ it when describing trials and depicting certain members of the judiciary, as well as the whole system. In Example (4), the strategy of negative evaluation is put into effect through the use of negative attributes (беспринципные, тупые, трусливые – unscrupulous, stupid, cowardly) applied to the judiciary and other representatives of the Russian legal system:
(4) Я много уже лет наблюдаю вблизи, как беспринципные следаки, тупые прокуроры и трусливые судьи сажают в тюрьмы невинных людей, разрушая жизни, семьи и страну. (NG, 9 April 2013) [For many years, I have been observing unscrupulous case investigators, stupid prosecutors and cowardly judges imprisoning innocent people and ruining their lives, families and the country.]
Similar to RG, NG incorporates quotations in its texts for argumentation purposes; however, these are not the quotes of judges. The oppositional newspaper voices the opinions of those who are subject to judicial power, for instance, a participant of a notorious trial who gives extremely negative labels to the court representatives (преступников, шпаны в мантиях – criminals, rabble wearing gowns). Furthermore, the participant applies an extended medical metaphor (поставленный ранее диагноз, клиника, шизофрения – diagnosed, clinical picture, schizophrenia) to construct a negative representation of the judiciary:
(5) Примитивная ложь, утрата здравого смысла и дремучее невежество преступников из Мосгорсуда […] убедительно подтверждают поставленный ранее диагноз – это клиника – полная шизофрения шпаны в мантиях. (NG, 25 January 2013) [The primitive lies, lack of common sense and dramatic ignorance of the criminals from the Moscow City Court […] vividly prove what was diagnosed before – this is a clinical picture – the complete schizophrenia of the rabble wearing gowns.]
The oppositional NG employs a negative evaluation strategy in order to shape representations of individual judges, to portray the judiciary as a whole and to provide detailed descriptions of hearings. The next extract highlights the absurdity of posthumous legal proceedings against Magnitskiy. The court is depicted metaphorically through a reference to a football game with only one team playing. An empty goal symbolising the lack of a defence is supposed to convey the idea of the incapacity of the whole system:
(6) Суд похож на футбол, в который играет одна команда: вяло, вразвалочку, а то и вообще руками заносят в пустые ворота мячи-«доказательства» прокурор, его свидетели и судья. (NG, 8 April 2013) [The trial is like a football match in which only one team is playing, unwillingly, reluctantly; from time to time the prosecutor, his witnesses and the judge bring the ball of the evidence with their hands into the empty goal.]
The outcomes of judges’ work, that is, their sentences, can also become the object of criticism within the strategy of negative evaluation. Criticism of this kind emerges in both oppositional and governmental newspapers, but the ways of representation differ considerably. While criticism is expressed either implicitly or reservedly in RG, it is the principal point of journalists in NG.
Thus, the strategy of evaluation in its two variants – positive and negative – is realised in both newspapers. Through positive evaluations, the governmental RG aims to create the image of a transparent, independent and fair judicial power. Negative evaluations within RG produce the effect of impartiality and pluralism, but they are mostly presented in a suppressed manner. Through negative evaluation, specifically the use of direct accusations and pejorative lexical units, journalists of the oppositional press accentuate the drawbacks and scandalous moments in the work of judicial power.
Emotionalisation strategy
As has been mentioned earlier in this article, the principal linguistic tool for the emotionalisation strategy involves explicit references to the emotions of various social actors. This strategy appears in print mainly in its negative variation and involves references to negative emotions. These references are supposed to evoke emotional feedback from the audience. Appeals to the reader’s emotions are often practised by journalists as an efficient way to achieve their goal, which consists in persuading the reader: ‘Once evoked by the story, these emotions can in turn influence a person’s experience of the narrative’ (Mar et al., 2011: 818). However, in terms of the theory of argumentation, ‘defending a standpoint by using non-argumentative means of persuasion and playing on the emotions of the audience’ is treated as a variant of argumentum ad populum, which is a violation of rules for critical discussion (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992: 213).
The emotions signified in texts are ascribed to different social actors, including judges. In Example (7), a judge’s attitude towards the events in the courtroom is defined with the adverb равнодушно (indifferently):
(7) Судья Москаленко слушала этот список равнодушно, пресекая попытки адвокатов Косенко обсудить, какое отношение имеет все перечисляемое к вине подсудимого. (NG, 18 February 2013) [The judge Moskalenko was listening indifferently, suppressing the attempts of Kosenko’s [the defendant] barristers to discuss how the things mentioned relate to the guilt of the defendant.]
Strictly speaking, by law, judges are not allowed to emote in court; they must remain – at least visually – impartial. The example given demonstrates the replacement of notions: the journalist substitutes the word беспристрастно (impartially) for равнодушно (indifferently), which changes the implication of the statement and causes discontent on the part of the readers with the judge’s manner, thus discrediting this member of the judiciary.
In the oppositional press, journalists also refer to their own negative emotions caused by doubtful cases. The impersonal syntactic structure in Example (8) implies that the audience is supposed to share the journalist’s feelings and disapproval of the case:
(8) Не отпускает ощущение дурного сна. (NG, 3 April 2013) [One can’t help the feeling of having an evil dream.]
Emotionalisation in the governmental RG – although also negative – is used for a different purpose. It is involved in depictions of crimes, for example, с особой жестокостью– with extreme cruelty, committed by criminals, with the court imposing a fair punishment.
(9) Родителей обвиняют в убийстве ребенка с особой жестокостью. (RG, 7 March 2013) [The parents are accused of killing their child with extreme cruelty.]
Negative emotionalisation in the governmental press is exploited to construct a more favourable image of the judiciary as compared to that constructed in the oppositional press. As far as positive emotionalisation is concerned, only a few examples are found in the data, and these cannot be relied on to reach any valid conclusions.
Generalisation strategy
The strategy of generalisation, in which generalised statements are made by journalists to represent particular events, often complements evaluations.
In Example (10), the journalist expresses a generalised judgement by recollecting an individual case that took place many years ago, in which a young woman was found guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda because she had written a letter to the Pope asking him to intercede on behalf for some priests being prosecuted. On the basis of this case, the journalist draws a generalised conclusion about the Russian judicial system:
(10) Ну так а что же вы сегодня от него хотите – каким он был, таким он и остался. (NG, 9 April 2013) [So what do you want from it now – it is just the same as it used to be.]
In terms of argumentation theory, this kind of argument cannot stand any criticism. The reference to past activities of a person or a body cannot be viewed as valid support for the speaker’s standpoint. This fallacy is listed as secundum quid (hasty generalisations), which consists in ‘using the appropriate argumentation scheme of concomitance incorrectly by making generalizations based upon observations that are not representative or not sufficient’ (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992: 214).
A similar line of argument is observed in another statement concerning the housing of the courts. A journalist claims that in a number of Russian cities, courts are located in buildings that previously were kindergartens. This fact leads the author to the following conclusion:
(11) У детей легче отобрать, особенно тем, кому положено их защищать. […] Отобрать у слабейших, у тех, кто не сможет защититься, – вот то, к чему привыкли суды и прокуратуры. (NG, 6 March 2013) [It is easier to take something away from children, especially for those who are supposed to protect them. […] Taking away from the weaker, from those who cannot protect themselves – this is what our courts and prosecutors have got accustomed to.]
Although the claim about being housed in former kindergartens is true, the ensuing generalisation can be viewed as a fallacious argument. The writer intentionally ignores a well-known fact that, in a particular period of Russian history – owing to the demographic gap – kindergarten buildings were underutilised and sometimes sold or given by local governments to other organisations. Thus, in fact, there was no process of taking away from the weaker. The predication привыкли (got accustomed to) indicates the repetitiveness of the activity, adding to the manipulative character of the publication.
The data do not reveal any examples of the negative generalisation strategy in the governmental newspaper, nor do they feature the strategy of positive generalisation in the oppositional press. However, the positive generalisation strategy is practised by RG. Referring to a great number of cases in which Russian citizens found protection of their interests in courts and successful results of the work performed by the Russian judiciary, RG resorts to quantitative indicators, for example, миллионы дел, во многих случаях
(millions of cases, in many cases), which imply a successful functioning of the judicial system:
(12) . . . Верховный суд ежегодно разрешает миллионы уголовных и гражданских дел. (RG, 21 February 2013) [… Every year the Supreme Court resolves millions of criminal and civil cases.]
The qualitative indicators used are rather vague, as they give the impression of magnitude rather than provide exact statistics. The strategy of positive generalisation highlights the results of judges’ work and contributes to their positive public image.
The comparative analysis of the generalisation strategy in governmental and oppositional presses reveals two polar types of representations of the judiciary which predetermine contradictions in public perceptions of judicial power.
Activation and passivation strategies
The activation strategy, that is, presenting a social actor as an active performer of some activity, seems to show the most duplicity in its pragmatic orientation, positive or negative. The positive activation strategy represents court activities as fruitful, socially important and significant, while picturing the judicial system as a powerful state institution overloaded with work and performing it in a correct, fair and honest way. By contrast, negative activation presents the judiciary as bearing responsibility for useless, incompetent or unfair actions. This is accomplished through nominatives or predicates that indicate the authorities’ power abuses or actions unpopular with society.
The strategy in its different variations is successfully realised in both governmental and oppositional press. Although their aims are quite opposite, both newspapers use linguistic tools similarly.
According to RG reports, action verbs выполнять, начинать, развивать, отклонять, поддерживать, принимать (do, begin, develop, refuse, support, adopt, etc.) convey the idea of a backlog of work carried out by the judiciary:
(13) Верховный суд проделал большую работу в процессе подготовки к полномасштабной апелляции. (RG, 21 February 2013) [The Supreme Court has accomplished a great amount of work in the course of preparation for a full-scale appeal.]
The idea of the immense work performed by the Supreme Court is manifested through the use of the epithets большую, полномасштабной (great, full-scale).
In Example (14), the verb ориентирует (orienting) used with the following object implies the idea of the Supreme Court’s strong power and active imposition of its will on subordinate courts:
(14) В течение нескольких лет Верховный суд ориентирует суды на то, что граждане должны платить только за качественно оказанные им коммунальные услуги. (RG, 11 January 2013) [For several years, the Supreme Court has been orienting courts towards the principle that citizens must pay only for high quality municipal services.]
Negative activation in RG transpires through the use of action verbs and verbal phrases мешать, препятствовать, освобождать, работать неохотно (impede, interfere, release, work unwillingly) and verbs of feeling быть недовольным, не доверять (be dissatisfied with, not to trust). These verbs describe regional courts or judges as incompetent, seeking personal benefits or reluctant to perform their duties properly:
(15) Вчера в Конституционном суде рассматривали сразу две жалобы, каждая из которых показывает, что уровнем справедливости недовольны не только рядовые граждане, но и судебная система в целом. (RG, 4 June 2013) [Two complaints were considered at once by the Constitutional Court yesterday; each of the two proved that average citizens as well as the judicial system are dissatisfied with the level of justice.]
The context cited in (15) is quite ambivalent. On the one hand, the clause рассматривали сразу две жалобы (two complaints were considered at once) demonstrates that the Constitutional Court is doing its job properly and diligently. On the other hand, the predicate недовольны (are dissatisfied) indicates that the actions of the court do not always lead to positive results.
There are scarce examples of positive activation in NG. They can emerge in descriptions of some notorious trials, but the majority of the verbs with positive semantics are, in fact, used to produce an ironic effect, which in turn leads to a negative activation effect. The following example is taken from an article on the case of the oppositional politician Alexei Navalny, who was accused of organising illegal financial schemes:
(16) За два дня суд, несмотря на протесты защиты, рассмотрел протокол допроса областного чиновника и дважды прослушал аудиозаписи разговора подсудимых. (NG, 30 May 2013) [In spite of the defence’s protests, it took the court only two days to study the interrogation tapescript of the regional official and to listen twice to the audio records of the defendants’ conversation.]
The description of the court’s actions is positive in terms of speed (за два дня суд – it took the court only two days), but the context implies that the court had no need to study the case so quickly; it should have spent more time to consider it thoroughly.
Negative activation seems to be the main technique of NG to represent scandalous cases. Among action verbs used by the journalists, we discover преуспевать, организовывать, допрашивать, начинать второй/третий судебный процесс против (succeed, organise, question, start the second/third trial against). The verbs acquire negative semantics only in the contexts in which they are used:
(17) Спустя десять лет можно констатировать: российские власти преуспели в организацииконвейера одностороннего правосудия, бесперебойно работающего по осуждению чеченских сепаратистов. (NG, 11 January 2013) [After ten years, one may state that Russian authorities have succeeded in the organisation of a one-way justice machine that works non-stop convicting Chechen separatists.]
The factual meaning of the verb работать (works) accompanied by the adverb бесперебойно (non-stop) lacks any negative connotation. However, when combined with the metaphor of a justice machine and the ironic use of the verb преуспели (have succeeded), it constructs a negative image of the court’s work.
The following context from the governmental daily demonstrates passivation in its positive variant, used strategically to relieve both courts equally of responsibility for a lack of cooperation. The passive voice structure никакого сотрудничества не получается (no cooperation is built) does not directly indicate who is responsible for this failure:
(18) Совсем никакого сотрудничества не получается у КС с Высшим арбитражным судом. (RG, 6 June 2013) [Absolutely no cooperation is built between the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Arbitration.]
Thus, activation and passivation are represented both in the governmental and oppositional presses but serve different purposes. The governmental newspaper exploits positive activation and positive passivation to represent the judicial system as fair and trustworthy. Negative activation techniques are generally employed by the governmental press to describe the ineffectiveness of some local courts. As for activation in NG, it only contributes to a critical portrait of the judiciary.
Foretelling
The foretelling strategy presupposes giving positive or negative forecasts describing possible variations of future events, which normally involves using future tenses. The governmental RG is optimistic in seeing the future of the judiciary as a strong authority able to protect each and every citizen in Russia. Again, RG quotes from the judiciary representatives:
(19) Никто не будет принимать на себя риски выбора иностранной юрисдикции, если правосудие его страны независимо и эффективно. (RG, 14 January 2013) [No one will take the risk of choosing a foreign court if justice in one’s home country is independent and effective.]
The rhetorical implication of the clause is quite clear. The negative pronoun-subject никто (no one) and the predicate не будет принимать (will take) form a seemingly evident generalisation, which is not supported by arguments. The two epithets независимо, эффективно (independent, effective) add to the positive image of judicial power in the country and give an advantageous prognosis.
In order to give the impression of an unbiased and objective approach to the judiciary, RG also resorts to negative foretelling, as in the following example:
(20) Основные принципы медиации – добровольность, равноправие, прозрачность процедуры и её конфиденциальность – не всегда могут быть применены и не всегда будут соответствовать закону при рассмотрении дел, связанных с совершением уголовно наказуемых деяний. (RG, 30 May 2013) [The main principles of mediation – one’s own desire, equality, transparency and confidence of the procedure – cannot always be applied and they will not always correspond to the law when investigating crime cases.]
The predicate не будут соответствовать (will not correspond) and the repetition of the adverb не всегда (not always) convey the idea that the judicial system is not perfect and some problems may arise in the future.
The oppositional NG is quite pessimistic in its prognoses. Cited below is a fragment of an interview with an imprisoned participant of the 2012 opposition demonstration in Moscow:
(21) Адвокатов я спрашиваю: вы хоть расскажите, что будет дальше. Они говорят: у нас прения месяца через два только начнутся, готовься, это долгая песня. Надеюсь, в суде установят истину, а не просто вынесут приговор. Но что-то пока не похоже. (NG, 14 January 2013) [I ask the lawyers to tell me what is going to be next. They say, the pleadings will start no earlier than in two months, so get ready – it usually takes long. I hope that the court will establish the truth instead of sentencing only but it doesn’t look like this so far.]
NG techniques reveal positivity by pointing to the person’s hopes for the best: надеюсь, в суде установят истину (I hope that the court will establish the truth), but the excerpt ends with a negative forecast: но что-то пока не похоже (it doesn’t look like this so far).
Conclusion
By drawing on CDA and a pragma-dialectical perspective on argumentation, we aimed to discover how regular publications about judicial power in the Russian press are, what discursive strategies are used to represent judicial power and how they are applied in the governmental and oppositional presses, and what images of the judiciary are constructed by discursive representations. We did not intend to present a quantitative analysis of the strategies discovered. Rather, we focused on qualitative issues, including the distribution of the strategies in both newspapers and their pragmatic and linguistic specifics that are predetermined ideologically.
The analysis demonstrates that publications about judicial power are regular in both RG and NG with the observed frequency of about seven articles per week in RG and about three articles per week in NG, which can result in the construction of a specific image of judicial power not only on paper, but also in readers’ minds.
The list of strategies distinguished in the press contains six principal strategies: evaluation, emotionalisation, generalisation, activation, passivation and foretelling. Each of the strategies exists in two variations: positive, which contributes to constructing an advantageous portrait of the judiciary, and negative, which serves the opposite purpose. Although all strategies are revealed in both newspapers, their ways of application differ considerably. RG tends to exploit positive evaluation, often through quoting the judiciary. Negative evaluation, which has the form of reserved criticism, in this newspaper constitutes a secondary element of representations, which is necessary to give the impression of an unbiased, critical and balanced approach. NG does not look for good qualities in courts; on its pages, it places harsh accusations against judges, often expressed through defendants’ voices.
When practising strategies of emotionalisation and generalisation, both newspapers commit fallacies of argumentation. They do so, however, with differing aims. While RG’s purpose is to highlight positive developments in the system, NG concentrates on discrediting judges. The employment of activation and passivation prove the tendencies discovered. A negative image dominates in the oppositional press, while the governmental press discursively relieves courts of their responsibilities for existing drawbacks. Strategies of positive and negative foretelling, which prevail in RG and NG, respectively, add a final touch to the whole picture. Predominantly positive images of the judiciary lead to optimistic forecasts in RG; gloomy pictures of the future are the logical finale of NG’s dismal representations.
It is evident that both newspapers strictly follow their strategic agendas, and the representations constructed are consistent with each newspaper’s ideology. RG avoids discussions of painful topics and notorious trials, and does not voice any oppositional views. On the contrary, NG never presents the views of judges and does not tend to examine the routine work of the judiciary.
Judicial power is a unique institution in its supposed isolation from, and neutrality to, any political forces. However, as the analysis of discourse demonstrates, the contrasting images of judicial power reveal the politicisation of the judiciary. Judicial power is relocated discursively into a political locus, where it is deprived of its inherent independence and neutrality and is transformed into a political force. As such, judicial power appears to be involved in relationships with other political actors, and these relationships, which are reflected and constructed discursively, can be explored further. We hope that this article opens new avenues of inquiry into the discursive construction and transformation of the judiciary in Russian print media.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We express gratitude to an anonymous reviewer for the valuable criticism and advice received on the first version of this article. We are also grateful to Professor Teun van Dijk for his support and cooperation.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.