IISEPS — Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Politycal Studies

LANGUAGE OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

What language should they speak with voters? For both major candidates, Russian is the most beneficial during the election campaign. Thus, respondents who asked A. Milinkevich the most frequent questions marked Russian as the language of their everyday communication (this variant of answer ranges from 52.5% to 79.3%). Belarusian language in this group doesn’t exceed the margin of error while combination of the two languages (Belarusian and Russian, called ‘trasyanka’, which is a mixture of the Belarusian literary language, its various territorial and social variants and Russian literary language (See Belarusian Language. Linguistic Compendium by B. Plotnikov, L. Antoniuk. Minsk, Interpressservice, Book House, 2003, 16 pgs)) makes substantial addition to the dominating monolingual group (See Table 1). It has turned out that the authors of the only negative question close to the margin of error are the most active ‘trasyanka’-speakers who almost don’t use the Russian language in everyday communication. (This to a great extent depends on education, age and place of residence.)

Table 1. The language of respondents who asked questions to A. Milinkevich, %

Variant of answer	Russian	Belarusian	Belarusian and Russian	Trasyanka
About his program	66.5	–	23.4	10.1
About peculiarities of his election campaign	76.4	0.9	11.5	11.2
What is the way out of the deadlock for Belarus? What should be done for this?	79.3	1.2	13.9	5.6
Where do you climb? Why do you need the power so much? You want to grab something for yourself?	52.5	–	10.7	36.8

Authors of the most frequent questions to the president (See Table 2) in their majority use ‘trasyanka’ in everyday life unlike authors of the questions to the opposition candidate. Thus, there are considerably more speakers of ‘trasyanka’ among authors of the most frequent question (on the raise in pension). In all other cases the groups of Russian language speakers or ‘trasynka’-speakers are fairly comparable. The only exception makes the question “For how long are you going to rule?” asked by the least number of ‘trasynka’-speakers and by the greatest number of Belarusian language speakers.

Table 2. The language of respondents who asked questions to A. Lukashenko, %

Variant of answer	Russian	Belarusian	Belarusian and Russian	Trasyanka
Would ask him to raise pensions	36.6	1.5	17.7	44.1
When will the living standard increase?	47.5	1.9	21.4	26.7
How long is he going to stay in power?	64.2	13.4	15.2	7.1
When will people live well?	49.2	5.6	19.2	26.1
Why do prices rise along with raise in wages?	36.8	–	30.0	30.8

From the viewpoint of Public Relations, language of communication during current election campaign is totally ambiguous. We think the authorities overdone it with translating major TV news programs into Russian. The audience loyal to the current president or showing interest in communicating with him is not likely to use only Russian language in everyday communication unlike the audience of his political opponents. As a rule, ‘trasyanka’ is not regarded by its speakers as a cultural value which should be fought for but it serves a means of identification between “like us – alien.” In his meetings with voters, A. Lukashenko often inserts Belarusian words, vernacular words and dialecticisms into his language which are taken as a sign of like-us-person. Mass media reports usually reduce A. Lukashenko’s Belarusian village origin which helps him look ‘like us’ in the eyes of both the Russian-speaking group and as well large group of those speaking the mixture of Russian and Belarusian.

However, pronouncedly Russian-language news on Belarusian TV channels may signal to a considerable part of the public that this mass media is alien. Apparently, introduction of Belarusian-language newsreels on the new TV channel LAD is an attempt to solve this problem. According to the nation survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences in November-December of 2005, LAD stood the last in the size of its audience (5.32%) and in the rating of evening newsreels on weekdays (1.11%). To compare, the audience of Panorama program on the First National Channel BT made up 12% which is more than twofold more than LAD’s audience. If this is true, the authorities have only partially solved the problem of communication.

In their turn, representatives of the opposition stand at a more complicated choice. A major part of their referent group is representatives of the elite who are native speakers of the Belarusian language. However, both the respondents ready to vote for an opposition candidate and the public showing interest in him normally speak Russian or ‘transyanka’ in everyday life and not the Belarusian language alone. In some cases Belarusian, especially use of its literary norm in everyday life, stands a marker of belonging to opposition.

In our opinion, representatives of the opposition need to define their means of communication and the languages in which they will deliver their key message to the public. Participants of the campaign should then try to attract alien audience and at the same keep their current audience. This shows the necessity for presidential candidates and their teams of using both languages and tuning to the audience they send the message to.