Ready for the Homeland - the Semiotic Dynamic of Dangerous Speech

The Croatian World War II fascist salute Za dom spremni (“Ready for the Homeland”) has been observed in various communicative situations in Croatia during the recent years (Brentin, 2016; Rodik, 2017; Damčević and Rodik, unpublished manuscript) while the controversies surrounding it have been on the increase (Milekić, 2016; Milekić, 2017). It has been pointed out by numerous scholars (Pavlaković, 2008c, Brentin, 2016) that Za dom spremni is without a doubt a fascist salute. However, this has been continuously disputed by various radical right-wing organizations and figures who have sought to re-signify the salute as the symptom of the desire of the Croatian people for independence. Hardly surprising, the attempt to maintain the perceived linearity of the Croatian statehood narrative (Bellamy, 2003) exhibits the common logic of inclusion-exclusion; namely, the aspects that are seen as not fitting into a particular narrative are deemed non-existent and pushed to the culture’s periphery (Lotman, 1990). Taking into account that the Croatian context is a conflict-laden one, with hate speech and the media carrying one of the decisive roles in inciting conflict (Thompson, 1999; Kurspahić, 2003a; Kolstø, 2009) , it becomes that more necessary to attempt to develop a more comprehensive framework for the analysis of nationalistically fueled hate speech in contemporary Croatia. In order to do this I rely on the dangerous speech model that was coined by Susan Benesch (2013) that considers speech in its wider context, as any speech, text, or image that may lead to violence, but also further marginalization of a group. The elements that Susan Benesch proposes as constituting dangerous speech are the message itself, the speaker, the audience, cultural context, and mode of dissemination (ibid.). Furthermore, the model takes into account that not every type of speech needs to be explicitly antagonistic in order to be dangerous, drawing attention to its subtler forms and avoiding the common ambiguity of the hate speech designation. Although the dangerous speech model was developed primarily for the purpose of mapping elements preceding violent conflict and relying on them in order to predict and prevent conflict escalation, my conjecture is that the model can also be a valuable teaching and learning tool that can provide a very necessary and nuanced analysis of specific hate speech practices. Following the terminological toolkit of cultural semiotics, communicative systems are observed as modelling systems, while one of the distinguishing features of a model is exactly its logic of inclusion-exclusion; namely, a model always accentuates certain aspects of reality and neglects others, deeming them for some reason unimportant (if even only analytical) (Lotman, 1990; Madisson, 2016). Accordingly, this paper will present the dominant communicative situations in which the fascist salute Za dom spremni has been appearing in the Croatian society, while observing it through the dangerous speech model and further exploring the potential of cultural semiotics for the analysis of such speech by relying primarily on the notions of self-description and autocommunication.
País: 
Estonia
Temas y ejes de trabajo: 
Semiótica e historia
Transposiciones y fenómenos transmediáticos
Institución: 
PhD student at the University of Tartu, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics
Mail: 
katarina.damcevic@ut.ee

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.