A United Speech Act of Resistance to Counter Soviet Russification

• In Event: Culture, Politics, and Ideology in the Soviet Era

Abstract

For many users the Estonian word “tibla”, the word targets Russian speaking migrants into Estonia during the Soviet period (and their descendents), but only when those people have a chauvinistic attitude towards Estonia. Linguistic models of slurs focus on their capacity to change the social standing of those targeted: they don’t just insult, they serve to make it permissible to socially exclude the targets of such words. When the target of a pejorative is decided entirely by conduct, this sort of exclusion can seem legitimate. Think of the utility of words like: “freerider”, “scab”, “traitor”, “coward”. These words target conduct, and can be used to lower the standing of their target on account of that conduct. This social regulation can be a good thing--helping to secure a social arrangement if threatened. During the Soviet era, Estonians had no real control over migration into Estonia and there were deep legitimate concerns about the effects migration was having on Estonian culture. We explore the hypotheses that (i) the pejorative could serve the social purpose of making clear that it is not socially acceptable for a migrant to have a chauvinistic attitude toward Estonia and that (ii) the concept expressed by the word could serve a psychological purpose of keeping track of a what’s truly normal and thus what’s a deviation from that normal. We find that each hypothesis, if true, is true only in a complicated sense.

Short Bio

Alexander Stewart Davies:
I work primarily on problems of communication that derive from linguistic context-sensitivity: from the fact that a sentence can often be interpreted differently, depending on the context of its use. I also have research interests in the politics of free speech, and in the semantics and pragmatics of Estonian as studied within the formal linguistic tradition: such as definiteness, slurs and quantifiers. I have also published on university bureaucracy. Increasingly, I'm bringing together my interest in bureaucracy with my interest in linguist context-sensitivity.

Specifically in the study of slurs, I have supervised a bachelor's thesis on the Estonian word word “n**ger” ("Slur or False Friend? An Assessment of "False Friends" Arguments", Helo-Liis Soodla, 2019). The thesis used various modern slur theories to investigate whether the word qualifies as a slur. I have written about some other features of the Estonian language that distinguish Estonian from languages studied in the field of Anglo-American philosophy of language, and the study of which could teach Anglo-American philosophy of language something. (for example: "Determination in English and Estonian: same pragmatic principles, different syntax", forthcoming).

Fred Gregor Rahuoja:
I am a collaborative researcher in the project “Mapping the use and offense of the Estonian slur "tibla" in Soviet occupied Estonia and after 1991”, an aspiring software developer and a former teacher at Russian Lyceum of Tallinn. I am interested in the functions of Natural and Formal Language expressions in changing contexts. Previously, I have researched how the notion of Estonianness was communicated by Estonian emigres in the United States to the Soviet occupied population in Estonia with a method combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Archaeology of Knowledge. I have taught Estonian as a Foreign Language, Media, Debate, History, Civics, and Art History at a high school level for more than 150 students.

Author

• Fred Gregor Rahuoja, University of Tartu, Kood/Jõhvi