ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala 191 Jaakko Turunen Semiotics of Politics Dialogicality of Parliamentary Talk Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Brusevitzsalen, Gamla Torget 6, Uppsala, Friday, 13 February 2015 at 13:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Professor Jens Bartelson (Lunds universitet). Abstract Turunen, J. 2015. Semiotics of Politics. Dialogicality of Parliamentary Talk. Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala 191. 396 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsali- ensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9131-4. Parliamentary talk, despite its central place in politics, has not been the focus of many qualita- tive studies. The present study investigates how parliamentary talk emerges in a dialogue between different arguments in the parliament. At the same time, this is a study of politics, of how human interaction gives birth to laws that regulate life in two contemporary democracies, Slovakia and Poland. It provides a close-reading of two political debates: on the state lan- guage in Slovakia and on gender parity in Poland. This study draws on hermeneutic and semiotic thinkers such as Gadamer, Bakhtin and Lotman to elaborate a dialogical understanding of language that can provide the basis for a method of textual analysis. The dialogical understanding of language emphasises that text and talk must be studied in the context of an interaction. The unit of analysis is a pair of utteranc- es, a question and an answer. Until an utterance has been interpreted, it carries only the poten- tial of meaning; its meaning is materialised by the responses it receives. The study further argues that conversation analysis and its tools can usefully be applied to the study of political debate. The method provides for the analysis of the dynamics between micro-scale interaction in the parliament and the macro-scale dynamics of culture. These dynamics assume two different forms that Lotman termed as “translation” and “explosion”. The study shows that parliamentary debate is characterised by a constantly evolving topic of discussion, namely that the meaning of the bill at the start of the debate and at the end of the debate are really two different bills. This is not because the content of the bill has under- gone changes, but because in the course of the debate, the bill has generated new cultural connections. Casting a vote in support of the bill does not approve just the bill itself but a whole set of interconnected political, social and cultural values—what Lotman approached as the semiosphere. This study suggests Lotman’s cultural semiotics can provide for “imperfect hermeneutics” that is sensitive to the dynamic and contested nature of tradition in politics whilst acknowledging the inevitability of culture in mediating political talk. Keywords: language, dialogicality, parliamentary talk, Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Yuri Lotman, Poland, Slovakia Jaakko Turunen, , Department of Government, Box 514, Uppsala University, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden. © Jaakko Turunen 2015 ISSN 0346-7538 ISBN 978-91-554-9131-4 urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-238631 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-238631) Cover picture: Igor Tajiev, Untitled, 1989. Printed by DanagårdLiTHO AB, 2015 To Joanna and Sofia Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................9 TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS ........................................................................13 ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................15 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................17 Need for a Method .............................................................................26 Text as the Object of Study ...............................................................35 Structure of the Book and the Empirical Studies ...............................38 Contributions .....................................................................................40 CHAPTER 2: LINGUISTIC TURN AND BEYOND IN POLITICS ..........................45 Stephen Toulmin’s Field-Dependent Logic .......................................48 Quentin Skinner and Illocutionary Force ..........................................55 Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis ............................69 Monologism and Dialogism ..............................................................80 Towards Dialogic Language ..............................................................89 CHAPTER 3: TALK AND IMMANENT CONTEXT ............................................93 Context and Linguistics .....................................................................94 Conversation Analysis and Social Action .........................................97 Institutional Talk and Context ...........................................................105 Context and Culture ...........................................................................121 CHAPTER 4: DIALOGICALITY OF POLITICAL TALK ......................................125 Dialogicality of Understanding ..........................................................127 Dialogicality of Language .................................................................133 Dialogicality of Culture .....................................................................140 Understanding, Explosion and Translation Reconsidered .................153 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSING OBSERVED TALK ................................................157 Dialogicality and Understanding .......................................................157 Conversation Analysis as a Method ..................................................162 Material and Validity .........................................................................176 CHAPTER 6: DEBATING LANGUAGE ..........................................................181 The Language and the State ...............................................................181 The Slovakian Legislative and the Routines of the National Council ................................................................................184 Talk in the National Council ..............................................................187 The Draft for a New State Language Law .........................................190 Debating Language ............................................................................212 State Language Law and the Public Contact .....................................247 State Language Law as Translation and Explosion ...........................255 Conclusions ........................................................................................269 CHAPTER 7: MAKING GENDER POLITICAL .................................................277 The Polish Legislative and the Sejm Routines ..................................280 Talk in the Sejm .................................................................................284 Talk in the Committee .......................................................................285 The Citizens’ Initiative and the Debate in Short ...............................286 Equal Chances or Equal Representation ............................................293 Equal Chances in Law and Practice ...................................................297 Talking Femininity as a Political Identity into Being ........................307 The Letter of Law and Good Democracy ..........................................324 Gender as Translation and Explosion ................................................332 Conclusions ........................................................................................342 CHAPTER 8: TOWARDS IMPERFECT HERMENEUTICS ....................................351 Dialogicality of Politics .....................................................................352 Methods of Interpretation and Analysis ............................................365 Towards Imperfect Hermeneutics ......................................................370 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................379 8 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my main supervisor Inga Brandell for your support for this work at different stages, on different levels, and on different fronts. While for a doctoral student the text is the primary focus, I have come to realise that the ideal supervisor acts on multiple fronts simultaneously. I want to thank you for letting me pursue my own path but keeping a careful eye on where I was heading. It has been a privilege to have you as my main supervisor. Above all, you have always understood that a deadline for any presentation text also marks the date you will first see it. And you have still been able to come back to me with comments! I would also like to thank Johan Tralau, my other supervisor, for your op- timism for the project as well as the ecumenical stance on science you have introduced to my work. I have truly enjoyed our discussions and the intellec- tual depth you have brought into our discussions. I also want to thank you for helping me out with many practical issues at Uppsala. Irina Sandomirskaja, not officially my supervisor you nevertheless took up the task with great professionalism and you were always available to read and discuss my texts. You have taught me so much that it is impossible to re- count it all here. Let me just mention the day you showed