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How to Speak "Newspeak": The Language of Russian Propaganda in 2022–2024 with Alexandra Arkhipova
Wed 5 June 20245 Jun 2024
06:00—07:30 PM
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Description
“Special military operation instead of” “war”; “clap” instead of “explosion”; “deprived of life” instead of “killed”; “line of contact” instead of “front”; “air target” instead of “drone”: these are all examples of contemporary Russian “Newspeak”, a vocabulary designed by the Russian President's administration to reframe the scale, implications and consequences of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova researches the evolution of public official discourse and its effect on the population's perception of reality. In her talk, she will unpack the role of policing language in normalising the state of exception, how the tendency to write and speak in this obscure “Newspeak” arises and develops, and what impact its use has on the life of Russians.
Speakers
Alexandra Arkhipova
Dr Alexandra Arkhipova is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology, The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris, France). She has authored over 100 articles and several books on political humour, the reasons behind the spread of conspiracy theories, rumours and urban legends. Arkhipova is a public anthropologist, maintaining a popular blog on Telegram and Facebook dedicated to social anthropology and analysing the current situation in Russia, with 78,000 subscribers on Telegram. She often provides her expertise to publications such as The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post and The Economist.
Location
5A Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2TA