Discourse analysis of modern practices of strategies to justify the technological sovereignty of Russia

Abstract

The formation of a policy of technological sovereignty is one of the most relevant and leading trends in Russian public policy in 2022. It has its origins in discursive practices and is gradually realized in social reality in the form of specific measures to build technological and industrial sovereignty in certain industries. The policy of technological sovereignty is inextricably linked to the preservation of national sovereignty, so the definition of the hegemonic content of this concept in Russian political discourse cannot be overestimated. Today in the discursive field there are three main strategies for justifying the policy of technological sovereignty: civilizational, economic and technocratic. Thus, the civilizational character is defined by us if the speech refers to the discourse of technological sovereignty policy underlying by national security and national sovereignty concepts, economic — if the idea that technology allows to have an economic advantage and develop the economy prevailed, technocratic — if the discourse of self-sufficiency and security of a particular industry, often justified by examples of import substitution policy from 2014. The purpose of this work is to identify the main strategies for substantiating the policy of technological sovereignty of Russia by analyzing the discourses of influential politicians and technocrats. The study was conducted using N. Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis methodology. In the course of the analysis politicians’ and experts’ speeches were classified according to the strategies of justifying the policy of technological sovereignty, taking into account the speaker’s position, justification concepts and speech tropes.